m 

•  ,.•■■• 


■ 

:'  ; ■  ■■ 


■-'--•'■ 

HI 


R.  L.  STEVENSON 


UNIFORM  WITH  THIS  VOLUME 
J.  M.  SYNGE 
By  P.  P.  Howe 

HENRY  JAMES 

By  Ford  Madox  Hueffer 

HENRIK  IBSEN 

By  R.  Ellis  Roberts 

THOMAS  HARDY 

By  Lascelles  Abercrombif. 

BERNARD  SHAW 
By  P.  P.  Howe 

WALTER  PATER 
By  Edward  Thomas 

WALT  WHITMAN 

By  Basil  de  Selincourt 

SAMUEL  BUTLER 
By  Gilbert  Cannan 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE 

By  Edward  Thomas 

GEORGE  GISSING 
By  Frank  Swinnerton 

RUDYARD  KIPLING 

By  Cyril  Falls 

WILLIAM  MORRIS 
By  John  Drink  water 

ROBERT  BRIDGES 

By  F.  E.  Brett  Young 

MAURICE  MAETERLINCK 
By  Una  Taylor 


R.  L.   STEVENSON 

A  CRITICAL  STUDY 

BY 

FRANK  SWINNERTON 


LONDON 

MARTIN        S  E  C  K  E  R 

NUMBER  FIVE  JOHN  STREET 

A  D  E  L  P  H  I 

MCMXIV 

I 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 
THE  MERRY  HEART 
THE  YOUNG  IDEA 
THE  CASEMENT 
THE  HAPPY  FAMILY 
ON  THE  STAIRCASE 


GEORGE  GISSING: 


A   CRITICAL   STUDY 


The  Sargent  portrait  of  Stevenson  which  forms  the  frontispiece 
to  this  volume  has  been  included  by  permission  of  Mr.  Lloyd 
Osboume,  to  whom  the  publisher  wishes  to  express  his  aeknoic- 
ledqments  and  thanks. 


TO 

DOUGLAS    GRAY 

IN  MALICE 


O  rl  1  *3  K  Q 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTCI 

I. 

BIOGRAPHICAL 

PAGE 

9 

II. 

JUVENILIA 

S6 

III. 

TRAVEL  BOOKS 

42 

IV. 

ESSAYS 

62 

V. 

POEMS 

90 

VI. 

PLAYS 

102 

VII. 

SHORT  STORIES 

116 

VIII. 

NOVELS  AND  ROMANCES 

143 

IX. 

CONCLUSION 

185 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

213 

I 

BIOGRAPHICAL 


As  the  purpose  of  this  book  is  entirely  critical, 
and  as  there  already  exist  several  works  deal- 
ing extensively  with  the  life  of  Stevenson,  the 
present  biographical  section  is  intentionally 
summary.  Its  object  is  merely  to  sketch  in 
outline  the  principal  events  of  Stevenson's  life, 
in  order  that  what  follows  may  require  no 
passages  of  biographical  elucidation.  Steven- 
son was  a  writer  of  many  sorts  of  stories, 
essays,  poems  ;  and  in  all  this  diversity  he  was 
at  no  time  preoccupied  with  one  particular  form 
of  art.  In  considering  each  form  separately, 
as  I  purpose  doing,  it  has  been  necessary  to 
group  into  single  divisions  work  written  at 
greatly  different  times  and  in  greatly  differing 
conditions.  In  Mr.  Graham  Balfour's  "  Life," 
and  very  remarkably  in  Sir  Sidney  Colvin's 
able  commentaries  upon  Stevenson's  letters, 
may  be  found  information  at  first  hand  which 
I  could  only  give  by  acts  of  piracy.    To  those 

9 


...  :.R.    I,.    STEVENSON 

works,  therefore,  I  refer  the  reader  who  wishes 
to  follow  in  chronological  detail  the  growth  of 
Stevenson's  talent.  They  are,  indeed,  essen- 
tial to  all  who  are  primarily  interested  in 
Stevenson  the  man.  Here,  the  attempt  will  be 
made  only  to  summarise  the  events  of  his  days, 
and  to  estimate  the  ultimate  value  of  his  work 
in  various  departments  of  letters.  This  book 
is  not  a  biography  ;  it  is  not  an  "  apprecia- 
tion "  ;    it  is  simply  a  critical  study. 

ii 

Stevenson  was  born  on  November  13,  1850  ; 
and  he  died,  almost  exactly  forty-four  years 
later,  on  December  3,  1894.  His  first  literary 
work,  undertaken  at  the  age  of  six,  was  an 
essay  upon  the  history  of  Moses.  This  he 
dictated  to  his  mother,  and  was  rewarded  for 
it  by  the  gift  of  a  Bible  picture  book.  It  is 
from  the  date  of  that  triumph  that  Stevenson's 
desire  to  be  a  writer  must  be  calculated.  A 
history  of  Joseph  followed,  and  later  on, 
apparently  at  the  age  of  nine,  he  again  dic- 
tated an  account  of  certain  travels  in  Perth. 
His  first  published  work  was  a  pamphlet  on 
The  Pentland  Rising,  written  (but  full  of  quo- 
tations) at  the  age  of  sixteen.  His  first 
"  regular  or  paid  contribution  to  periodical 
literature  "  was  the  essay  called  Roads  (now 

10 


BIOGRAPHICAL 

included  in  Essays  of  Travel),  which  was 
written  when  the  author  was  between  twenty- 
two  and  twenty-three.  The  first  actual  book 
to  be  published  was  An  Inland  Voyage  (1878), 
written  when  Stevenson  was  twenty-seven ; 
but  all  the  essays  which  ultimately  formed  the 
volumes  entitled  Virginibus  Puerisque  (1881) 
and  Familiar  Studies  of  Men  and  Books  (1882) 
are  the  product  of  1874  and  onwards.  These, 
indicated  very  roughly,  are  the  beginnings  of 
his  literary  career.  Of  course  there  were  many 
other  contributary  facts  which  led  to  his  turn- 
ing author  ;  and  there  is  probably  no  writer 
whose  childhood  is  so  fully  "  documented  "  as 
Stevenson's.  He  claimed  to  be  one  of  those 
who  do  not  forget  their  own  lives,  and,  in 
accordance  with  his  practice,  he  has  supplied 
us  with  numerous  essays  in  which  we  may 
trace  his  growth  and  his  experiences.  That  he 
was  an  only  child  and  a  delicate  one  we  all 
know ;  so,  too,  we  know  that  his  grandfather 
was  that  Robert  Stevenson  who  built  the  Bell 
Rock  lighthouse.  In  the  few  chapters  con- 
tributed by  Robert  Louis  to  A  Family  of 
Engineers  we  shall  find  an  account,  some  of  it 
fanciful,  but  some  of  it  also  perfectly  accurate, 
of  the  Stevenson  family  and  of  Robert  Steven- 
son, the  grandfather,  in  particular.  In 
Memories  and  Portraits  is  included  a  sketch  of 

11 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

Thomas  Stevenson,  the  father  of  Robert 
Louis  ;  and  in  Mr.  Balfour's  "  Life  "  there  is 
ample  information  for  those  who  wish  to  study 
the  influences  of  heredity. 

For  our  own  purpose  it  may  be  interesting 
to  note  three  points  in  this  connection.  As  a 
boy,  and  even  as  a  youth,  Stevenson  was  ex- 
pected by  his  father  to  be  an  engineer  and  to 
carry  on  the  family  tradition.  His  early  train- 
ing therefore  brought  him  much  to  the  sea, 
with  rather  special  facilities  for  appreciating 
the  more  active  relations  of  man  to  the  sea. 
The  second  point  is  that  the  Stevensons  had 
always  been,  true  to  their  Scots  instincts,  very 
strict  religious  disciplinarians  (Robert  Steven- 
son the  elder  is  very  illuminating  on  this)  ;  but 
that  they  were  also  very  shrewd  and  deter- 
mined men  of  action.  Finally,  another  grand- 
father of  Robert  Louis,  this  time  on  the 
Balfour  side,  was  in  fact  a  clergyman.  Steven- 
son significantly  admits  that  he  may  have 
inherited  from  this  grandfather  the  love  of 
sermonising,  which  is  as  noticeable  in  An 
Inland  Voyage  and  in  Virginibus  Puerisque  as 
it  is  in  his  latest  non-fictional  work.  We  can- 
not forget  that  his  contribution  to  festivities 
marking  the  anniversary  of  his  marriage  was 
upon  one  occasion  a  sermon  on  St.  Jacob's  Oil, 
delivered  from  a  pulpit  carried  as  part-cargo 

12 


BIOGRAPHICAL 

by  the  "  Janet  Nichol."  From  his  mother, 
too,  he  is  said  to  have  inherited  that  constitu- 
tional delicacy  which  made  him  subject 
throughout  his  life  to  periods  of  serious  illness, 
and  which  eventually  led  to  his  early  death. 

There  was  one  other  influence  upon  his 
childhood  which  must  not  be  neglected  as  long 
as  the  pendulum  of  thought  association  swings 
steadily  from  heredity  to  environment.  That 
influence  was  the  influence  exercised  by  his 
nurse,  Alison  Cunningham.  It  is  admitted  to 
have  been  enormous,  and  I  am  not  sure  that 
it  is  desirable  to  repeat  in  this  place  what  is 
so  much  common  knowledge.  But  it  is  per- 
haps worth  while  to  emphasise  the  fact  that, 
while  Alison  Cunningham  was  not  only  a  de- 
voted nurse,  night  and  day,  to  the  delicate 
child,  she  actually  was  in  many  ways  respon- 
sible for  the  peculiar  bent  of  Stevenson's  mind. 
She  it  was  who  read  to  him,  who  declaimed  to 
him,  the  sounds  of  fine  words  which  he  loved 
so  well  in  after  life.  The  meaning  of  the  words 
he  sometimes  did  not  grasp  ;  the  sounds — so 
admirable,  it  would  seem,  was  her  delivery — 
were  his  deep  delight.  Not  only  that  :  she 
introduced  him  thus  early  to  the  Covenanting 
writers  upon  whom  he  claimed  to  have  based 
his  sense  of  style  ;  and,  however  lightly  we 
may  regard  his  various  affirmations  as  to  the 

13 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

source  of  his  "  style,"  and  as  to  the  principles 
upon  which  we  might  expect  to  find  it  based, 
the  sense  of  style,  which  is  quite  another  thing, 
was  almost  certainly  awakened  in  him  by  these 
means.  Sense  of  style,  I  think,  is  a  much 
greater  point  in  Stevenson's  equipment  than 
the  actual  "  style."  The  style  varies ;  the 
sense  of  style  is  constant,  as  it  must  be  in  any 
writer  who  is  not  a  Freeman.  Alison  Cunning- 
ham, being  herself  possessed  of  this  sense,  or 
of  the  savour  of  words,  impressed  it  upon 
"  her  boy  "  ;  and  the  result  we  may  see.  All 
Stevenson's  subsequent  "  learning  "  was  so 
much  exercise  :  no  man  learns  how  to  write 
solely  by  observation  and  imitation. 

From  being  a  lonely  and  delicate  child  spin- 
ning fancies  and  hearing  stirring  words  and 
stories  and  sermons  in  the  nursery,  Stevenson 
became  a  lonely  and  delicate  child  in  many 
places.  One  of  them  was  the  Manse  at 
Colinton,  the  home  of  his  clerical  grandfather. 
Another  was  the  house  in  Heriot  Row,  Edin- 
burgh, where  he  played  with  his  brilliant 
cousin  R.  A.  M.  Stevenson.  R.A.M.  was  not 
his  only  cousin — there  were  many  others  ;  but 
the  personality  of  R.A.M.  is  such  that  one 
could  wish  to  know  the  whole  of  it,  so  attrac- 
tive are  the  references  in  Stevenson's  essays 
and  letters,  and  in  Mr.  Balfour's  biography. 

14 


BIOGRAPHICAL 

I  imagine,  although  I  cannot  be  sure,  that  it 
was  with  R.A.M.  that  Stevenson  played  at 
producing  plays  on  toy-stages.  We  shall  see 
later  how  impossible  he  found  it,  when  he  came 
to  consider  the  drama  as  a  literary  field,  to 
shake  off  the  influence  of  Skelt's  drama  ;  but 
anybody  who  has  played  with  toy-stages  will 
respond  to  the  enthusiasm  discovered  in 
A  Penny  Plain  and  Twopence  Coloured,  and  will 
sympathise  with  the  delight  which  Stevenson 
must  later  have  felt  on  being  able  to  revive  in 
Mr.  Lloyd  Osbourne's  company  the  old  Skeltian 

joys. 

School  followed  in  due  course,  the  attend- 
ances broken  by  sickness  and  possibly  by  the 
incurable  idleness  which  one  supposes  to  have 
been  due  to  lassitude  rather  than  to  mischief. 
Mr.  Balfour  details  the  components  of  Steven- 
son's education,  from  Latin  and  French  and 
German,  to  bathing  and  dancing.  Football  is 
also  mentioned,  while  riding  seems  to  have 
developed  into  a  sort  of  reckless  horsemanship. 
When  he  was  eleven  or  twelve  Stevenson 
came  first  to  London,  and  went  with  his  father 
to  Homburg.  Later  he  went  twice  with 
Mrs.  Stevenson  to  Mentone,  travelling,  besides, 
on  the  first  occasion,  through  Italy,  and  return- 
ing by  way  of  Germany  and  the  Rhine.  It 
is,  however,  remarkable  that  he  does  not  seem 

15 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

to  have  retained  much  memory  of  so  interest- 
ing an  experience  ;   a  fact  which  would  suggest 
that,   although   he   was  able  at  this  time  to 
store  for  future  use  ample  impressions  of  his 
own  feelings  and  his  own  habits,  he  had  not 
yet  awakened  to  any  very  lively  or  precise 
observation  of  the  external  world.    That  obser- 
vation began  with  the  determination  to  write, 
and  Stevenson  then  lost  no  opportunity  of  set- 
ting down  exactly  his  impressions  of  things  seen. 
In  1867 — that  is,  after  the  publication,  and 
after  the  withdrawal,  of  The  Pentland  Rising — 
Stevenson  began  his  training  as  a  civil  engineer, 
working  for   a   Science   degree   at   Edinburgh 
University.     One  may  learn  something  of  his 
experience  there  from  Memories  and  Portraits 
and  even  from  The  Memoir  of  Fleeming  Jenkin. 
It  was  now  that  he  met  Charles  Baxter  (the 
letters  to  whom  are  the  j  oiliest  and  apparently 
most  candid  of  any  he  wrote),  James  Walter 
Ferrier,  Sir  Walter  Simpson  (the  real  hero  of 
An    Inland    Voyage),    and    Fleeming    Jenkin, 
whose    wife    mistook    Stevenson    for    a    poet. 
Here,  too,  he  joined  the  "  Speculative  Society," 
of  which  presently  he  became  an  unimportant 
president.     Moreover,  the  friendships  formed 
at  the  University  led  to  the  foundation  of  a 
mysterious  society  of  six  members,  called  the 
L.J.R.    (signifying    Liberty,    Justice,    Rever- 

16 


BIOGRAPHICAL 

ence),  which  has  been  the  occasion  of  much 
comment  on  account  of  the  secrecy  with  which 
the  meaning  of  the  initials  has  been  guarded. 
It  was  while  he  was  at  the  University  that 
his  desire  to  write  became  acute.  By  his  own 
account,  he  went  everywhere  with  two  little 
books,  one  to  read,  and  one  to  write  in.  He 
read  a  great  deal,  talked  a  great  deal,  made 
friends,  and  charmed  everybody  very  much. 
In  1868,  1869,  and  1870  he  spent  some  time  on 
the  West  Coast  of  Scotland,  watching  the  work 
which  was  being  carried  on  by  his  father's  firm 
at  Anstruther,  Wick,  and  finally  at  Earraid 
(an  island  introduced  into  Catriona  and  The 
Merry  Men).  In  1871  he  received  from  the 
Scottish  Society  of  Arts  a  silver  medal  for  a 
paper  {A  New  Form  of  Intermittent  Light  for 
Lighthouses)  ;  and  two  years  later  another 
paper,  On  the  Thermal  Influence  of  Forests,  was 
communicated  to  the  Royal  Society  of  Edin- 
burgh. But  it  was  in  1871  that  Stevenson  gave 
up,  and  induced  his  father  most  unwillingly  to 
give  up,  the  plans  hitherto  regarded  as  definite 
for  his  future  career.  He  could  not  become  a 
civil  engineer  ;  but  determined  that  he  must 
make  his  way  by  letters.  A  compromise  was 
effected,  by  the  terms  of  which  he  read  for  the 
Bar  ;  and  he  passed  his  preliminary  examina- 
tion in  1872. 

b  17 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 


in 

In  1873  Stevenson,  then  in  great  distress 
because  of  religious  differences  with  his  father, 
made  the  acquaintance  of  Mrs.  Sitwell  (now 
Lady  Colvin)  and,  through  her,  of  Sidney 
Colvin  himself.  The  importance  of  these  two 
friendships  could  hardly  be  over-estimated. 
Mrs.  Sitwell  gave  readily  and  generously  the 
sympathy  of  which  Stevenson  was  so  much  in 
need  ;  and  Mr.  Colvin  (as  he  then  was)  proved 
to  be,  not  only  a  friend,  but  a  guide  and  a 
most  influential  champion.  It  was  through 
Mr.  Colvin  that  Stevenson  made  his  real  start 
as  a  professional  writer,  for  Mr.  Colvin  was  a 
writer  and  the  friend  of  writers,  a  critic  and 
the  friend  of — editors.  Stevenson's  plans  for 
removal  to  London  were  made,  and  to  London 
he  came  ;  but  he  was  then  so  prostrated  with 
nervous  exhaustion,  with  danger  of  serious 
complications,  that  he  was  sent  to  the  Riviera 
for  the  winter.  Mr.  Colvin  joined  him  at 
Mentone,  and  introduced  him  to  Andrew 
Lang.  Thereafter,  Stevenson  went  to  Paris  ; 
and  it  was  not  until  the  end  of  April,  1874, 
that  he  returned  to  Edinburgh,  apparently  so 
far  recovered  that  he  could  enjoy,  three  months 
later,  a  long  yachting  excursion  on  the  West 

18 


BIOGRAPHICAL 

Coast.  Further  study  followed,  and  at  length 
Stevenson  was  in  1875  called  to  the  Scottish 
Bar,  having  been  elected  previously,  through 
Mr.  Colvin's  kindly  agency,  a  member  of  the 
Savile  Club.  Membership  of  the  Savile  led  to 
the  beginning  of  his  association  with  Leslie 
Stephen,  and  to  his  introduction  to  the  then 
editors  of  "  The  Academy  "  and  M  The  Saturday 
Review."  In  this  period  of  his  life  occurred  the 
journey  described  in  An  Inland  Voyage,  and 
his  highly  important  "discovery"  of  W.  E. 
Henley  in  an  Edinburgh  hospital. 

Finally,  it  is  important  to  remember  that 
in  these  full  years,  1874-1879,  Stevenson  spent 
a  considerable  amount  of  time  in  France, 
where  he  stayed  as  a  rule  either  in  Paris  or 
in  the  neighbourhood  of  Fontainebleau,  most 
frequently  at  Barbizon.  Details  of  his  life  in 
France  are  to  be  found  in  The  Wrecker,  in  the 
essay  called  Forest  Notes  in  Essays  of  Travel, 
and  in  that  on  Fontainebleau  in  Across  the 
Plains.  He  was  writing  fairly  steadily,  and  he 
was  getting  his  work  published  without  em- 
barrassing difficulty,  from  Ordered  South  in 
1874  to  Travels  with  a  Donkey  in  1879.  And  it 
was  in  Grez  in  1876  that  he  made  the  acquaint- 
ance of  Mrs.  Osbourne,  an  American  lady 
separated  from  her  husband.  The  meeting 
was  in  fact  the  turning-point   in   his  career  : 

19 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

even  Travels  with  a  Donkey,  as  he  admitted  in 
a  letter  to  his  cousin,  R.  A.  M.  Stevenson, 
contains  "  lots  of  mere  protestations  to  F." 
When  Mrs.  Osbourne  returned  to  America  in 
1878  she  sought  and  obtained  a  divorce  from 
her  husband.  Stevenson  heard  of  her  inten- 
tion, and  heard  also  that  she  was  ill.  He  was 
filled  with  the  idea  of  marrying  Mrs.  Osbourne, 
and  was  determined  to  put  his  character  to 
the  test  of  so  long  and  arduous  a  journey  for 
the  purpose,  with  the  inevitable  strain  which 
his  purpose  involved.  With  perhaps  a  final 
exhibition  of  quite  youthful  affectation,  and  a 
serious  misconception  of  his  parents'  attitude 
to  himself  and  to  the  desirability  of  such  a 
marriage,  Stevenson  took  parental  opposition 
for  granted.  Nevertheless,  it  is  a  proof  of 
considerable,  if  unnecessary,  courage,  that  he 
followed  Mrs.  Osbourne  to  California  by  a  sort 
of  emigrant  ship  and  an  American  emigrant 
train.  His  experiences  on  the  journey  are 
veraciously  recorded  in  The  Amateur  Emigrant 
and  Across  the  Plains, 

The  rough,  miserable  journey,  and  the 
exhaustion  consequent  upon  the  undertaking 
of  so  long  and  difficult  an  expedition,  brought 
Stevenson's  vitality  very  low  ;  so  that,  after 
much  strain,  much  miscellaneous  literary 
work,  and  many  self-imposed  privations,  he  fell 

20 


BIOGRAPHICAL 

seriously  ill  at  San  Francisco  towards  the  end 
of  1879.  Only  careful  nursing,  and  a  genial 
cable  from  his  father,  promising  an  annual 
sum  of  £250,  restored  health  and  spirits  ;  and 
on  May  19,  1880,  he  was  married  to  Mrs. 
Osbourne.  Their  life  at  Silverado  has  already 
been  described  in  The  Silverado  Squatters  ;  it 
was  followed  by  a  return  to  Europe,  a  succession 
of  journeys  from  Scotland  to  Davos,  Barbizon, 
Paris,  and  St.  Germain  ;  and  a  further  series 
back  again  to  Pitlochry  and  Braemar.  At  the 
last-named  place  Treasure  Island  was  begun, 
and  nineteen  chapters  of  the  book  were  written  : 
here,  too,  we  gather,  the  first  poems  for  A  Child's 
Garden  of  Verses  laid  the  foundations  of  that 
book.  Again,  owing'  to  bad  weather  in  Scot- 
land, it  was  found  necessary  to  resort  to 
Davos,  where  the  Stevensons  lived  in  a  chalet, 
and  where  the  works  of  the  Davos  Press  saw 
the  light.  After  a  winter  so  spent,  Stevenson 
was  pronounced  well  enough  to  resume  normal 
life,  and  he  returned  accordingly  to  England 
and  Scotland.  But  before  long  it  was  necessary 
to  go  to  the  South  of  France,  and  after  various 
misfortunes  he  settled  at  length  at  Hyeres. 
Here  he  wrote  The  Silverado  Squatters  and 
resumed  work  on  Prince  Otto,  a  work  long 
before  planned  as  both  novel  and  play. 

Further  illness  succeeded,  until  it  was  found 
21 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

possible  to  settle  at  Bournemouth,  in  the 
house  called  Skerryvore ;  and  in  Bournemouth 
Stevenson  spent  a  comparatively  long  time 
(from  1884  to  1887).  Here  he  made  new 
friendships  and  revived  old  ones.  Now  were 
published  A  Child's  Garden,  Prince  Otto,  The 
Dynamiter,  Br,  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde,  and 
Kidnapped  ;  and  now,  in  1887,  occurred  the 
death  of  Stevenson's  father,  of  whom  a  sketch 
is  given  in  Memories  and  Portraits. 

The  relations  of  father  and  son  were  obviously 
peculiar.  Thomas  Stevenson  was  strict  in  the 
matter  of  faith — more  strict  than  those  of  this 
day  can  perhaps  understand — and  it  is  evident 
that  this  strictness  provoked  conflict  between 
Robert  Louis  and  his  father.  By  the  letters 
to  Mrs.  Sit  well  we  gather  that  the  differences 
greatly  troubled  Robert  Louis  ;  but  it  seems 
very  clear  on  the  other  hand  that  wherever 
the  elder  Stevenson's  character  is  actively 
illustrated  in  Mr.  Balfour's  "Life,"  or  in 
Stevenson's  letters,  the  instance  is  one  of  kind- 
ness and  consideration.  Mr.  Charles  Baxter 
recalls  the  dreadful  expression  of  his  friend 
when  the  first  draft  of  propositions  for  the 
L.J.R.  fell  into  Thomas  Stevenson's  hands  ; 
and  no  doubt  there  is  much  that  is  personal  in 
such  stories  as  Weir,  The  Wrecker,  and  John 
Nicholson,   in  which  the  relations  of  fathers 

22 


BIOGRAPHICAL 

and  sons  are  studied.  That  Thomas  loved 
and  admired  his  son  seems  certain  ;  but  it 
must  be  supposed  that  his  own  austerity  was 
not  always  tolerable  to  a  nature  less  austere 
and  sensitive  to  the  charge  of  levity. 

Almost  immediately  after  the  death  of  his 
father,  Stevenson  left  England  finally.  He 
went  first  to  New  York,  and  then  to 
Saranac  (in  the  Adirondack^),  where  the 
climate  was  said  to  be  beneficial  to  those 
suffering  from  lung  trouble.  Here  he  began 
The  Master  of  Ballantrae  while  Mr.  Lloyd 
Osbourne  was  busy  on  The  Wrong  Box ;  and, 
when  summer  was  returning,  the  whole  party 
removed,  first  to  New  Jersey,  and  then  to  the 
schooner  "  Casco,"  in  which  they  travelled  to 
the  Marquesas.  In  the  next  three  years  they 
wandered  much  among  the  groups  of  islands 
in  the  South  Seas.  The  Master  of  Ballantrae 
was  finished  in  a  house,  or  rather,  in  a  pavilion, 
at  Waikiki,  a  short  distance  from  Honolulu. 
It  was  after  finishing  that  book  that  Stevenson 
made  further  journeys,  until  at  last,  by  means 
of  a  trading  schooner  called  "  The  Equator," 
the  Stevensons  all  went  to  Samoa,  where  they 
settled  in  Apia.  Here  Robert  Louis  bought 
land,  and  built  a  home ;  and  here,  during 
the  last  years  of  his  life,  he  lived  in  greater 
continuous    health  —  broken    though    it    was 

23 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

with  occasional  periods  of  illness  more  or  less 
serious — than  he  had  enjoyed  for  a  number 
of  years. 

IV 

At  Apia  he  was  active,  both  physically  and 
in  the  way  of  authorship  :  his  exile,  trying 
though  it  must  at  times  have  been,  involved 
health  and  happiness  ;  and  his  loyal  friends 
and  his  increasingly  numerous  admirers  kept 
him,  as  far  as  they  were  able  to  do,  from  the 
dire  neglect  into  which  the  thousands  of  miles' 
distance  from  home  might  suggest  that  he  would 
inevitably  fall.  I  say  his  loyal  friends,  rather 
than  many,  because  Mrs.  Stevenson  particularly 
declares  that  Stevenson  had  few  intimate 
friends.  Well-wishers  and  admirers  he  had  ; 
but  there  is  noticeable  in  the  majority  of 
those  letters  so  ably  collected  and  edited  by 
Sir  Sidney  Colvin  a  lack  of  the  genuine  give 
and  take  of  true  intimacy.  Information  con- 
cerning himself  and  his  doings,  which  suggests 
the  use  of  his  friends  as  tests  or  sounding- 
boards,  forms  the  staple  of  such  letters.  I  am 
told  that  many  intimate  letters  are  not  in- 
cluded— for  reasons  which  are  perfectly  clear 
and  good ;  but  the  truth  is  that  it  is  only  in  the 
letters  to  Baxter  that  there  is  any  sense  of  great 
ease.     Even  the  letters  to  Sir  Sidney  Colvin, 

24 


BIOGRAPHICAL 

full,  clear,  friendly  as  they  are,  suggest  im- 
penetrable reserves  and  an  intense  respect  for 
the  man  to  whom  they  were  written.  They 
suggest  that  Stevenson  very  much  wanted 
Sir  Sidney  to  go  on  admiring,  liking,  and 
believing  in  him ;  but  they  are  not  letters 
showing  any  deep  understanding  or  taking-for- 
granted  of  understanding.  Candour,  of  course, 
there  is  ;  a  jocularity  natural  to  Stevenson  ;  a 
reliance  upon  the  integrity  and  goodwill  of  his 
correspondent ;  a  complete  gratitude.  All 
we  miss  is  the  little  tick  of  feeling  which  would 
give  ease  to  the  whole  series  of  letters.  They 
might  all  have  been  written  for  other  eyes. 
When  one  says  that,  one  dismisses  the  com- 
plete spontaneity  of  the  letters  in  what  may 
seem  to  be  an  arbitrary  fashion.  But  one  is 
not,  after  all,  surprised  that  Stevenson  should 
have  made  the  request  that  a  selection  of  his 
letters  should  be  published. 

Of  friends,  then,  there  must  be  few,  because 
Mrs.  Stevenson  is  obviously  in  a  better  position 
than  anybody  else  to  judge  upon  this  point.  She 
says  that,  contrary  to  the  general  impression, 
Stevenson  had  few  really  intimate  friends, 
because  his  nature  was  deeply  reserved.  From 
that  we  may  infer  that,  like  other  vain  men, 
who,  however,  are  purged  by  their  vanity 
rather  than   destroyed  by   it,   he   told   much 

25 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

about  himself  without  finally,  as  the  phrase  is, 
"  giving  himself  away."  His  high  spirits,  his 
"  bursts  of  confidence,"  his  gay  jocularity — 
all  these  things,  part  of  the  man's  irrepressible 
vanity,  were  health  to  him  :  they  enabled  him 
to  keep  light  in  a  system  which  might  have 
developed,  through  physical  delicacy,  in  the 
direction  of  morbidity.  That  he  was  naturally 
cold,  in  the  sense  that  he  kept  his  face  always 
towards  his  friends,  I  am  prepared  to  believe  : 
if  he  had  not  done  that  he  perhaps  would  have 
lost  their  respect,  since  personal  charm  is  a 
fragile  base  for  friendship.  By  his  own  family 
at  Vailima  he  was  accused  of  being  "  secre- 
tive," as  Mrs.  Strong  records  in  "  Memories 
of  Vailima."  And  Stevenson,  it  must  be 
remembered,  was  a  Scotsman,  with  a  great 
fund  of  melancholy.  Quite  clearly,  Henley, 
his  friend  for  years  and  his  collaborator,  never 
understood  him.  Henley  deplored  the  later 
Stevenson,  and  loved  the  Louis  (or  rather, 
the  Lewis)  he  had  known  in  early  days.  He 
loved,  that  is,  the  charming  person  who  had 
discovered  him,  and  with  whom  he  had  talked 
and  plotted  and  bragged.  He  did  not  love  the 
man  who  seems  to  have  turned  from  him. 
The  cause  of  their  estrangement  I  do  not 
know.  I  imagine  that  they  thought  differently 
of  the  merits  of  the  plays,  that  Henley  pressed 

26 


BIOGRAPHICAL 

Stevenson  at  a  time  when  Stevenson  felt  him- 
self to  be  drawing  away  from  Henley  and 
passing  into  a  rather  delightful  isolation,  and 
that  when  Henley  clung  to  their  old  comrade- 
ship with  characteristic  vehemence,  Stevenson 
felt  suddenly  bored  with  so  loud  an  ally.  That 
may  be  sheer  nonsense  :  I  only  infer  it.  What- 
ever the  cause,  Stevenson  seems  to  me  always 
a  little  patronising  to  Henley,  and  Henley's 
attack  in  the  "  Pall  Mall  Magazine  "  (December, 
1901)  suggests  as  well  as  envy  the  blunt 
bewilderment  of  a  man  forsaken.  Henley,  of 
course,  knew  that  he  lacked  the  inventive 
power  of  Stevenson  ;  and  he  knew  that  his 
power  to  feel  was  more  intense  than  Steven- 
son's. That  in  itself  makes  a  sufficient 
explanation  of  the  quarrel  :  literary  friends 
must  not  be  rivals,  or  their  critical  faculty 
will  overrun  into  spleen  at  any  injudicious 
comparisons. 

Besides  Henley,  there  is  R.  A.  M.  Stevenson, 
a  fascinating  figure  ;  but  imperfectly  shown 
in  the  "Letters."  There  is  Sir  Sidney  Colvin, 
best  and  truest  of  friends.  There  is  Charles 
Baxter,  the  recipient  of  the  letters  which 
seem  to  me  the  j  oiliest  Stevenson  wrote — a 
man  of  much  joviality,  I  am  told,  and  a  very 
loyal  worker  on  his  friend's  behalf.  For 
the  rest,  they  are  friends  in  a  general  sense  : 

27 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

not  intimates,  but  men  whose  good  opinion 
Stevenson  was  proud  to  have  earned  :  friends 
in  the  wide  (but  not  the  most  subtle)  scheme 
of  friendship  which  makes  for  social  ease  and 
confidence  and  interest.  Baxter  and  R.  A.  If. 
Stevenson  were  survivors  of  early  intimacies. 
Mrs.  Sitwell  and  Sir  Sidney  Colvin  belonged 
to  a  later  time,  a  time  of  stress,  but  a  time 
also  of  growth.  The  others,  whom  we 
thus  objectionably  lump  together  in  a  single 
questionable  word,  were  the  warm,  kind  ac- 
quaintances of  manhood.  It  is  useless  to 
demand  intimacy  in  these  cases,  and  I  should 
not  have  laboured  the  point  if  it  had  not  been 
suggested  that  Stevenson  was  one  of  those  who 
had  a  genius  for  friendship.  He  was  always, 
I  imagine,  cordial,  friendly,  charming  to  these 
friends  ;  but  his  letters  (unless  we  suppose  Sir 
Sidney  Colvin  to  have  edited  more  freely  than 
we  should  ordinarily  suspect)  do  not  seem  to 
have  much  to  say  about  his  correspondents, 
and  it  is  not  perhaps  very  unreasonable  to 
think  that  his  own  work  and  his  own  character 
were  the  basis  of  the  exchange  of  letters. 
Stevenson  no  doubt  liked  these  friends  ;  but  I 
am  disposed  to  question  whether  he  was  very 
much  interested  in  them.  I  think  Stevenson 
generally  inspired  more  affection  than  he  was 
accustomed  to  give  in  return. 

28 


BIOGRAPHICAL 


We  must  remember,  in  thus  speaking  of 
Stevenson's  friendships,  that  he  was  a  Scots- 
man, that  he  had  been  really  a  lonely  child 
and  boy,  accustomed  to  a  degree  of  solitude, 
that  he  was  an  egoist  (as,  presumably,  all 
writers  are  egoists),  and  that  his  personal 
charm  is  unquestioned.  Men  who  met  him 
for  the  first  time  were  fascinated  by  his  vivacity, 
his  fresh  play  of  expression,  his  manner  ;  and 
Stevenson,  of  course,  as  was  only  natural, 
responded  instantly  to  their  admiration.  He 
was  carried  away  in  talk,  and  in  talk  walked 
with  his  new  friends  until  they,  forced  as  they 
were  by  other  engagements  to  leave  him, 
gained  from  such  a  vivid  ripple  of  comment 
an  impression  of  something  alive  and  mercurial, 
something  like  the  wonderful  run  of  quick- 
silver, in  a  companion  so  inexhaustibly 
vivacious.  It  was  the  nervous  brilliance  of 
Stevenson  which  attracted  men  often  of 
greater  real  ability  ;  he  possessed  a  quality 
which  they  felt  to  be  foreign,  almost  dazzling. 
So  Stevenson,  leaving  them,  strung  to  a  height 
of  exhilaration  by  his  own  excited  verbosity, 
would  go  upon  his  way,  also  attracted  by  his 
happy    feelings   and    his    happy   phrases.      In 

29 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

such  a  case  the  man  of  charm  has  two  alter- 
natives :  he  can  suppress  his  ebullience  for 
the  purpose  of  learning  or  giving  ;  or  he  can 
recognise  the  excitement  and,  supposing  it  to 
be  lyricism,  can,  if  I  may  use  that  word  (as 
I  have  above  used  the  word  "verbosity") 
without  any  evil  meaning  being  attached  to  it, 
exploit  his  charm.  Stevenson,  I  believe,  ex- 
ploited his  charm.  It  is  often  so  exploited  ; 
the  temptation  to  exploit  it  is  sometimes 
irresistible.  The  kind  thing,  the  attractive 
thing,  the  charming  thing — this  is  the  thing 
to  say  and  do,  rather  than  the  honest  thing. 
Instinctively  a  girl  learns  the  better  side  of  her 
face,  the  particular  irresistible  turn  of  her 
head,  the  perfect  cadence  of  voice.  So  does 
the  man  who  has  this  personal  charm.  So,  too, 
does  he  realise  instinctively  the  value  of  the 
external  details  of  friendship.  In  only  one 
point  does  the  knowledge  of  such  externals 
fail.  The  kind  thing  makes  friends  (in  the 
sense  of  cordial  strangers)  ;  but  it  does  not 
make  anything  more  subtle  than  cordial  strange- 
ness ;  and  it  does  not  seem  to  me  that  any- 
body really  ever  knew  Stevenson  very  well. 
He  told  them  much  about  himself,  gaily  ;  and 
they  knew  he  was  charming.  I  do  not  suggest 
any  duplicity  on  his  part.  He  was  perfectly 
real  in  his  vivacity,  but  it  was  nervous  vivacity, 

30 


BIOGRAPHICAL 

an  excitement  that  led,  when  it  relaxed,  or 
was  relaxed,  to  exhaustion,  possibly  even  to 
tears,  just  as  we  know  that  Stevenson  could 
be  carried  by  his  own  fooling  to  the  verge  of 
hysteria.  So  it  was  that  Stevenson  became  a 
figure  to  himself,  as  well  as  to  his  friends ;  by 
his  desire  to  continue  the  pleasant  impression 
already  created,  he  did  tend  to  see  himself 
objectively  (just  as  he  is  said  to  have  made 
the  gestures  he  was  describing  in  his  work, 
and  even  to  have  gone  running  to  a  mirror  to 
see  the  expression  the  imagined  person  in  his 
book  was  wearing).  In  his  early  books  that  is 
plain  ;  in  Lay  Morals  we  may  feel  that  he  is 
all  the  time  in  the  pulpit,  leaning  over,  and 
talking  very  earnestly,  very  gently,  very 
persuasively,  and  with  extraordinary  self- 
consciousness,  to  a  congregation  that  is  quite 
clearly  charmed  by  his  personality.  Above 
all,  very  persuasively  ;  and  above  even  his 
persuasiveness,  the  deprecating  sense  of  charm, 
the  use  of  personal  anecdote  to  give  the  sermon 
an  authentic  air  of  confession. 

The  nervous,  vivid  buoyancy  of  his  character- 
istic manner  was  a  part  of  his  lack  of  health. 
He  was,  it  is  known,  rarely  in  actual  pain  ; 
and  it  is  very  often  the  case  that  delicate 
persons  have  this  nervous  exuberance  of 
temperament,  which  has  almost  the  show  of 

31 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

vitality.  It  has  the  show ;  but  when  the 
person  is  no  longer  before  us,  our  memory  is  a 
vague,  fond  dream  of  something  intangible — 
what  we  call,  elusive.  We  talk  of  elusive 
''charm  when  we  cannot  remember  a  single 
thing  that  has  aroused  in  us  the  impression  of 
having  been  charmed.  Exactly  in  that  way 
was  Stevenson  remembered  by  those  he  met — 
as  a  vivid  butterfly  is  remembered  ;  some- 
thing indescribably  strange  and  curious,  not 
to  be  caught  and  held,  for  its  brilliant  and 
wayward  fluttering.  The  charm  was  the 
thing  that  attracted  men  kinder,  more  staid, 
more  truly  genial,  wiser  than  himself ;  it 
excused  the  meagre  philosophisings  and  it 
excused  some  of  those  rather  selfish  and 
thoughtless  actions  which  Mr.  Balfour  says 
nobody  dreamed  of  resenting.  The  same 
charm  we  shall  find  in  most  of  Stevenson's 
work,  until  it  grows  stale  in  St.  Ives.  We  shall 
speak  of  its  literary  aspects  later.  At  this 
moment  we  are  dealing  exclusively  with  his 
manner.  I  want  to  show  that  Stevenson's  ill- 
health  was  not  the  ill-health  which  makes  a 
man  peevish  through  constant  pain.  It  was, 
in  fact,  extreme  delicacy,  rather  than  ill- 
health  ;  and  the  reaction  from  delicacy  of 
physical  health  (or,  in  reality,  the  consequence 
of  this   delicacy)    was    this   peculiar   nervous 

32 


BIOGRAPHICAL 

brilliancy  of  manner  which  I  have  described. 
It  is  often  mistaken  by  writers  on  Stevenson 
for  courage ;  but  this  is  an  unimaginative 
conception  resulting  from  the  notion  that  he 
was  constantly  in  pain,  and  that  he  deliberately 
willed  to  be  cheerful  and  gay.  Nobody  who 
deliberately  wills  to  be  cheerful  ever  succeeds 
in  being  more  than  drolly  unconvincing. 
Stevenson  had  courage  which  was  otherwise 
illustrated  :  this  cheerfulness,  this  "  funning  " 
was  the  natural  consequence  of  nervous  ex- 
citability, which,  as  I  have  said,  often 
appears  as  though  it  was  vitality,  as  though  it 
must  be  of  more  substance  than  we  know  it 
really  is.  It  is  like  the  colour  in  an  invalid's 
cheek,  like  the  invalid's  energy,  like  the 
invalid's  bright  eyes  :  it  is  due  to  the  stimulus 
of  excitement.  Stevenson,  alone,  had  his  flat 
moments  of  dull  mood  and  tired  vanity ; 
Stevenson,  in  company,  thrilled  with  the  life 
which  his  friends  regarded  as  his  inimitable 
and  unquestionable  personal  charm. 

You  are  thus  to  imagine  a  nervously-moving 
man,  tall,  very  dark,  very  thin ;  his  hair 
generally  worn  long ;  his  eyes,  large,  dark,  and 
bright,  unusually  wide  apart;  his  face  long, 
markedly  boned.  His  dress,  with  velvet  jacket, 
is  bizarre  ;  his  whole  manner  is  restless  ;  his 
hands,  skeleton-thin,  constantly  flickering  with 
c  33 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

every  change  of  pose.  His  grace  of  move- 
ment, his  extraordinary  play  of  expression,  are 
everywhere  commented  upon  by  those  who 
essay  verbal  portraiture  ;  and  all  agree  that 
the  photographs  in  existence  reproduce  only 
the  dead  features  which  expression  changed 
each  instant.  Stevenson,  it  seems,  varied  his 
position  suddenly  and  frequently — moving 
from  hearth-rug  to  chair,  from  chair,  again, 
to  table,  walking  quickly  and  brushing  his 
moustache  as  we  may  see  in  Sargent's  brilliant 
impression.  Nervousness  was  in  every  move- 
ment, every  gesture  ;  and  the  figure  of  Steven- 
son seems  to  be  recalled,  by  many  of  those 
who  attempt  the  description,  as  invariably 
in  motion,  the  face  alive  with  interest  and 
expression,  while  the  man  all  the  time  talked, 
like  "  young  Mr.  Harry  Fielding,  who  pours 
out  everything  he  has  in  his  heart,  and  is,  in 
effect,  as  brilliant,  as  engaging,  and  as  arrest- 
ing a  talker  as  Colonel  Esmond  has  known." 

I  give  the  portrait  for  what  it  may  be  worth. 
No  doubt  it  does  not  represent  the  Stevenson 
of  Samoa  ;  perhaps  it  does  not  represent  the 
real  Stevenson  at  all.  It  is  Stevenson  as  one 
may  imagine  him,  and  as  another  may  find  it 
impossible  to  imagine  him.  There  is  room, 
surely,  for  a  variety  of  portraits,  as  for  the 
inevitable  variety  of  critical  estimates  ;    and  if 

34 


BIOGRAPHICAL 

the  estimates  hitherto  have  all  followed  a 
particular  line  of  pleasant  comment,  at  least 
the  portraits  one  sees  and  reads  are  all  portraits 
of  diverse  Stevensons  made  dull  or  trivial  or 
engrossing  according  to  the  opportunities  and 
skill  of  the  delineator.  I  offer  my  portrait,  in 
this  and  in  succeeding  chapters,  in  good  faith  : 
more,  it  would  be  impossible  for  me  to  claim. 


35 


II 

JUVENILIA 


Before  we  come  to  the  main  divisions  of 
Stevenson's  work  it  may  be  as  well  to  consider 
briefly  those  few  early  works  which,  to  the 
majority  of  readers,  were  first  made  known 
by  their  inclusion  in  the  Edinburgh  Edition. 
It  is  unfortunately  impossible  to  recover  the 
original  essay  upon  Moses,  or  the  earliest 
romances  ;  so  that  we  are  presented  first  with 
The  Pentland  Rising,  published  as  a  pamphlet 
when  Stevenson  was  sixteen.  This  is  con- 
scientious and  fully-documented  work,  written 
too  close  to  authorities  to  have  much  flexibility 
or  personal  interest ;  but  it  is  not  strikingly 
immature.  Daniel  Defoe,  Burnet,  Fuller's 
"  History  of  the  Holy  Warre,"  and  a  surprising 
number  of  other  writers  upon  the  period  are 
successively  quoted  with  good  effect ;  and  it 
is  amusing  to  note  the  references  to  "  A  Cloud 
of  Witnesses,"  which  appears  to  have  been  a 
favourite  with  Alison  Cunningham.  This 
pamphlet  is  decidedly  the  outcome  of  Alison 

36 


JUVENILIA 

Cunningham's  teaching,  full  as  it  is  of  the 
authentic  manner  of  the  Covenanters,  which 
Stevenson  was  presently  to  imitate  to  the 
admiration  of  all  the  world. 

Many  readers  of  Stevenson  must  have  re- 
garded with  eyes  of  marvel  the  two  serious 
papers,  the  gravity  of  which  is  perfect,  dealing 
with  the  Thermal  Influence  of  Forests,   and 
with   a  new  form  of  Intermittent  Light.     I 
have    no    ability    to    determine    the    scientific 
value  of  these  papers  ;    and  as  literary  works 
they  have  less  interest  than  most  of  the  other 
instances  of  Juvenilia.     They  are  illustrated 
with  diagrams,  and  they  possess  coherence  and 
lucidity.     In  any  work  these  two  qualities  are 
important,  and  we  shall  find  that  clearness  is 
a   quality    which    Stevenson   never   lost.      He 
always  succeeded  in  being  clear,  in  escaping 
the  obscure  sayings  of  the  philosopher  or  the 
enthusiast.     That  is  to  say,  he  was  a  writer. 
He  was  a  writer  in  those  two  scientific  papers, 
no  less  than  in  Virginibus  Puerisque  or  Prince 
Otto.     When  obscurity  is  so  easy,  clearness  is 
a    distinguished    virtue  ;      and    if    Stevenson 
sometimes  errs  to  the  extent  of  robbing  his 
work   of  thickets   and   dim  frightening  dark- 
nesses, that  is  also  because  he  was  a  writer, 
and  because  he  preferred  to  be  a  writer. 
There   follow   a   number   of  shorter  pieces, 
37 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

some  of  them  the  fruit  of  his  University  days 
of  practising  ;  some  later,  so  that  they  include 
the  papers  on  Roads  and  Forest  Notes  which 
are  mentioned  in  the  next  chapter.  These 
sometimes  show  obvious  immaturity,  but  they 
also  show  more  than  anything  else  could  do 
the  real  doggedness  with  which  Stevenson 
pursued  his  aim  of  learning  to  write.  They 
show  him,  at  least,  forming  his  sentences  with 
careful  attention  to  rhythm  and  to  sound — 
not  yet  elaborate,  not  yet  so  "  kneaded  "  as 
his  manner  was  in  a  little  while  to  be.  It  is 
here  sometimes  thin,  as  is  the  subject  matter. 
In  one  sketch,  The  Wreath  of  Immortelles,  we 
may  catch  a  glimpse  of  the  method  of  opening 
an  essay  which  Stevenson  developed  later ; 
but,  on  the  other  hand,  in  the  Forest  Notes 
(possibly  more  mature  work)  there  is  really 
excellent  treatment  of  good  and  interesting 
matter.  Three  "  criticisms  "  have  point.  One, 
of  Lord  Lytton's  "Fables  in  Slang,"  is  fairly 
conventional ;  the  second,  on  Salvini's  Mac- 
beth, was  the  one  condemned  by  Fleeming 
Jenkin  because  it  showed  Stevenson  thinking 
more  about  himself  than  about  Salvini;  the  third 
is  a  very  delightful  little  paper  on  Bagster's 
illustrated  edition  of  "The Pilgrim's  Progress." 
All  these  short  pieces  are  of  interest  because 
they  show  the  growth  of  Stevenson  as  a  writer. 

38 


JUVENILIA 

They  are  the  more  interesting  because  at  the 
same  time  they  illustrate  the  way  in  which 
Stevenson  gradually  made  his  work  take  on 
the  impress  of  his  personality.  All  young 
work  lacks  character,  as  young  hand-writing 
does,  and  as  young  style  does  ;  and  all  young 
essay-work  in  particular  appears  sometimes 
rather  tepid  and  even  silly  when  the  author  tries 
to  interest  us  in  his  "  ego."  Stevenson  from 
the  first  saw  himself  as  the  central  object  in 
his  essay  :  it  is  amusing  to  watch  how  soon  he 
begins  to  make  himself  count  as  an  effective 
central  object.  At  first  the  personality  is  thin  : 
it  has  not  carried.  Later  it  develops  with  the 
development  of  style  :  the  use  of  words 
becomes  firmer,  and  with  that  firmness  comes 
greater  confidence,  greater  ease,  in  the  pro- 
jection of  the  author's  self.  It  is  perhaps  not 
until  we  reach  the  familiar  essays  that  we  find 
Stevenson  fully  master  of  himself,  for  literary 
purposes ;  but  the  growth  provides  matter 
for  rather  ingenious  study. 

ii 

In  that  volume  of  the  collected  editions 
which  contains  these  early  essays  it  is  cus- 
tomary to  include  the  works  issued  by  the 
Davos  Press  ;  and  Mr.  Lloyd  Osbourne  (at 
the  age  of  twelve  the  proprietor  of  the  Davos 

39 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

Press)  has  also  discovered  a  wholly  amusing 
account  of  an  important  military  campaign 
conducted  in  an  attic  at  Davos  by  himself  and 
Stevenson  as  opposed  commanders  of  tin 
soldiers.  The  game,  which  had  of  course 
inexhaustible  interest,  has  also,  as  described 
by  Mr.  Osbourne,  its  intricacies  for  the  lay 
mind  ;  but  Stevenson's  account  of  this  par- 
ticular campaign,  written  by  means  of  official 
reports,  rumours,  newspapers  yellow  and  other- 
wise, offers  no  difficulty.  It  is  an  excellent 
piece  of  pretence.  The  Davos  Press,  which 
provided  the  world  with  unique  works  by 
Stevenson  and  by  Mr.  Osbourne,  illustrated 
with  original  woodcuts,  belongs,  as  does  the 
war-game,  to  the  time  spent  in  the  chalet  at 
Davos  shortly  after  Stevenson's  marriage.  It 
shows  how  easily  he  could  enjoy  elaborate 
games  (as  most  men  do  enjoy  them,  if 
they  are  not  deterred  by  self-importance  or 
preoccupation  with  matters  more  strictly 
commercial)  ;  and  the  relationship  with 
Mr.  Osbourne  seems  to  have  been  as  frank 
and  lively  as  anybody  could  desire. 

I  have  mentioned  these  matters  out  of  their 
due  place  because  they  seem  to  me  to  have  a 
value  as  contributing  to  certain  suggestions 
which  I  shall  make  later.  By  his  marriage, 
Stevenson   gained   not   only   a   very   devoted 

40 


JUVENILIA 

wife  but  a  very  intimate  boy-friend,  the  kind 
of  friend  he  very  likely  had  long  wanted. 
There  was  almost  twenty  years'  difference 
between  them  ;  but  that,  I  think,  made  the 
friendship  more  suited  to  Stevenson's  nature. 
By  means  of  this  difference  he  could  indulge 
in  that  very  conscious  make-belief  for  which 
his  nature  craved — a  detached  make-belief, 
which  enabled  him  to  enjoy  the  play  both  in 
fact  and  as  a  spectator,  to  make  up  for 
Mr.  Osbourne's  admitted  superiority  in  marks- 
manship by  the  subtilty  of  his  own  military 
devices  ;  finally,  to  enjoy  the  quite  personal 
pleasure  of  placing  upon  record,  with  plans  and 
military  terms,  in  the  best  journalistic  style, 
accounts  of  his  military  achievements.  The  art 
of  gloating  innocently  over  his  own  power  to 
gloat ;  the  power  to  delight  consciously  in  his 
own  delight  at  being  able  to  play — these,  I 
believe,  are  naturally  Scots  pleasures,  and  pro- 
foundly Stevensonian  pleasures.  I  hope  that 
no  reader  will  deny  Stevenson  the  right  to 
such  enjoyments,  for  Stevenson's  not  very 
complex  nature  is  really  bound  up  in  them. 
If  we  take  from  him  the  satisfaction  of  seeing 
himself  in  every  conceivable  posture,  we  take 
from  him  a  vanity  which  permeates  his  whole 
life-work,  and  which,  properly  regarded,  is 
harmless  to  offend  our  taste. 

41 


Ill 

TRAVEL    BOOKS 


"  One  of  the  pleasant  est  things  in  the  world," 
says  Hazlitt,  "  is  going  on  a  journey  ;  but  I 
like  to  go  alone."  In  his  earliest  days  of 
manhood,  Stevenson  also  formed  the  habit  of 
going  alone ;  and  in  his  own  essay  upon 
Walking  Tours  he  very  circumstantially  en- 
dorses Hazlitt's  view,  for  reasons  into  which  we 
need  not  enter  here.  We  may  find  an  indication 
of  his  habit  even  so  early  as  the  fragment, 
included  in  Essays  of  Travel,  which  describes 
a  journey  from  Cockermouth  to  Keswick. 
Other  papers,  of  various  dates,  show  that, 
either  from  choice  or  from  necessity,  he  often 
did  tramp  solitary  ;  but  it  is  worth  noting 
that  only  in  the  walk  through  the  Cevennes 
and  in  his  journey  to  America  did  Stevenson 
ever  travel  alone  for  any  length  of  time.  His 
other,  and  on  the  whole  more  important, 
travel-books  are  the  descriptions  of  journeys 
taken  in  company. 

42 


TRAVEL     BOOKS 

Furthermore,  in  the  early  essay  which  we 
have  just  noted  he  rather  ostentatiously  pro- 
claims his  practice  in  writing  accounts  of  his 
tours.     He  says,  "  I  cannot  describe  a  thing 
that  is  before  me  at  the  moment,  or  that  has 
been  before  me  only  a  little  while  before  ;    I 
must  allow  my  recollections  to  get  thoroughly 
strained   free   from   all   chaff   till   nothing   be 
except  the  pure  gold."     Apart  from  the  sur- 
prising alchemy  of  the  declaration,  this   dis- 
ability is  wholly  to  his  credit  ;    but  Stevenson 
found,    of   course,   that   when   he   planned   to 
record  a  journey  of  some  duration,  in  a  form 
more  or  less  chronological,  he  must  preserve  a 
sense  of  fabric  in  his  book  by  keeping  a  daily 
diary    of    experiences.      That    is    why,    in    his 
earliest  book  of  travel,  An  Inland  Voyage,  he 
mentions  c;  writing-up  "  his  diary  at  the  end 
of  each  day  ;   and  it  explains  also  the  frequent 
references  in  later  books  to  such  an  evening 
occupation.    As  Stevenson  admitted  in  Cocker- 
mouth  and  Keswick,  the  process  of  incubation 
might  in  the  long  run  be  unreasonably  pro- 
longed ;   and  perhaps  it  is  true  that  experience 
taught  him  very  early  that  in  the  professional 
writer  thrift  is  a  virtue.    It  was,  if  so,  a  lesson 
that  he  never  forgot. 

Although  the  fragment  on  Keswick  to  which 
I  have  referred  is  clearly  a  juvenile  piece  of 

43 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

work,  it  is  highly  entertaining  as  a  small  piece 
of  autobiography.  On  its  own  account  the  essay 
is  rather  pragmatical  and  anecdotal,  after  the 
manner  of  an  afternoon  sermon,  and  it  gives 
as  yet  small  evidence  that  the  writer  has  any 
highly  developed  sense  of  accurate  and  signifi- 
cant observation.  But  to  the  reader  who 
cares  to  go  below  its  superficial  interest,  there 
is  other  material.  Not  without  value  are  the 
boyish  allusions  to  his  pipe,  to  his  whisky-and- 
soda,  and  to  his  importance  in  the  smoking- 
room  of  the  hotel.  These  are  all  typical,  and 
interesting.  What,  however,  is  clear  on  the 
question  of  mere  literary  talent,  is  Stevenson's 
ability  to  spin  something  out  of  himself.  He 
must  be  talking  ;  and,  if  he  has  nothing  of 
much  moment  to  say,  there  must  follow  some 
apt  reflection,  or  a  "  tale  of  an  old  Scots 
minister." 

Would  that  the  ability,  a  very  dangerous 
ability,  had  been  shed  as  soon  as  were  some  of 
Stevenson's  juvenile  theories  about  the  art  of 
writing  !  This  particular  ability  remains  very 
noticeably  in  his  first  full-size  travel-book, 
An  Inland  Voyage,  along  with  another  trait — 
his  abnormal  consciousness  of  his  own  appear- 
ance in  the  eyes  of  other  people.  Stevenson 
was  always  interested  in  that  aspect  of  his 
personality  :   he  could  not  forget  for  a  moment 

44 


TRAVEL     BOOKS 

that  his  costume,  his  face,  his  manner,  all 
carried  some  impression  to  the  beholder.  It 
was  a  part  of  his  nature  that  he  should  see 
children  upon  the  river  bank,  not  merely  as 
children,  but  as  an  audience,  a  congregation 
of  speculating  souls  busy  wondering  about 
him,  likening  him  among  themselves  to  some 
particular  figure,  interested  in  him.  Nobody, 
I  think,  had  ever  failed  to  be  interested  in 
him. 


ii 

An  Inland  Voyage,  on  the  whole,  is  a  poor 
book.  It  records  a  canoeing  expedition  made 
with  a  friend  ;  and  it  is  full  of  Puritanical 
obtuseness  and  a  strained  vanity  which  inter- 
feres with  the  main  narrative.  Setting  out 
from  Antwerp,  the  two  friends  paddled,  often 
in  the  rain,  and  sometimes — as  in  the  case  of 
Stevenson's  arrest,  and  his  dangerous  accident 
with  the  fallen  tree  across  the  swollen  Oise — 
in  dire  straits.  They  travelled  on  the  Sambre 
and  down  the  Oise  by  Origny  and  Moy,  Xoyon, 
Compiegne,  and  Precy  ;  but  the  weather  was 
bad,  and  there  were  trying  difficulties  about 
lodgings  ;  and  Stevenson's  account  reads  as 
though  he  had  been  chilled  through  and 
through,  and  as  though  he  needed  nothing  so 

45 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

much  as  his  home.  Almost  invariably,  in  this 
book,  his  little  spurts  of  epigram  and  apoph- 
thegm suggest  low  spirits  as  well  as  a  sort  of 
cautious  experimentalism  ;  and  the  book, 
which  apparently  was  very  handsomely  re- 
ceived by  the  Press  on  its  publication,  is  eked 
out  with  matter  which,  beneath  the  nervous 
delicacy  of  Stevenson's  practising  style,  is 
raw  and  sometimes  handle.  In  no  other  travel- 
book  is  there  shown  such  obvious  effort. 
What  emerges  from  An  Inland  Voyage  is  the 
charmingly  natural  behaviour  on  several  occa- 
sions of  Stevenson's  companion,  a  proof  even 
thus  early  of  the  author's  ability  to  be  aware 
of  these  traits  in  his  friends  which,  on  the 
printed  page,  convey  to  the  reader  an  im- 
pression of  the  person  so  lightly  sketched. 
This,  however,  is  an  exiguous  interest  in  a 
book  supposed  to  be  a  picturesque  work  of 
travel  and  topography. 

Very  much  superior  is  the  Sternian  Travels 
with  a  Donkey.  Here  there  is  much  greater 
lightness  of  touch,  and  a  really  admirable 
sense  of  observation  is  revealed.  Some  of  the 
descriptions  of  things  seen  are  written  with 
indescribable  delicacy,  as  are  the  character 
sketches.  Just  so  are  some  of  the  descriptions 
of  places  contained  in  the  series  of  letters  to 
Mrs.  Sitwell.     In  Travels  with  a  Donkey  for 

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the  first  time  the  reader  actually  makes  a  third 
with  Stevenson  and  the  endearing  Modestine 
upon  their  journey,  travelling  with  them  and 
sharing  the  sensations  of  the  human  pedestrian. 
If  we  resent  certain  intolerable  affectations — 
such  as  the  pretentious  and  penurious  fancy 
of  placing  money  by  the  roadside  in  payment  for 
lodgings  in  the  open  air — that  resentment  may 
be  partly  due  to  the  fact  that  we  are  not  told  the 
amount  of  the  payment,  as  well,  of  course,  as 
to  the  fact  that  we  suspect  the  author's  motive 
in  detailing  his  charities.     Stevenson  seems, 
in  fact,  to  be  asking  for  commendation  of  a 
fantastic  generosity  without  giving  us  sufficient 
evidence  to  evoke  any  feeling  of  conviction. 
We  see  him  here,  not  so  much  obeying  a  happy 
impulse  as  observing  himself  in  the  light  of 
his  own  esteem  ;   and  that  is  hardly  a  pleasant 
sight    to    the    onlooker.      To    counterbalance 
such  lapses — which,  very  likely,  are  regarded 
by  lovers  of  Stevenson  as  no  lapses  at  all,  but 
as    delightful    exhalations    of    personality,    as 
glimpses  of  his  character  which  they  are  enabled 
to    enjoy    only    through    this    very    innocent 
vanity    which    we    have    noted, — there    are    a 
thousand  graceful  touches,   fit  to  remind  us 
that  Travels  with  a  Donkey  is  a  much  better 
book  than  An  Inland  Voyage,  and,  in  fact,  the 
best  of  his  travel-books  until  we  reach  that 

47 


K  .     L  .     5  T  E  V  E  A  S  U W 

delightfully  modest  one  which  is  too  little 
known — The  Silverado  Squatters.  The  Donkey 
is  the  first  in  which  the  charming  side  of  his 
personality  really  "  gets  going,"  and  it  will 
always  remain  a  pretty  and  effective  sketch 
of  a  journey  taken  in  wayward  weather,  with 
good  spirits,  a  shrewd  and  observant  eye,  and, 
what  is  also  to  the  point,  a  commendable 
courage. 

The  Amateur  Emigrant  and  Across  the  Plains, 
two  long  records  which,  although  published 
separately,  are  practically  a  single  work,  for 
all  their  difference  from  that  book  are  a  drop 
to  the  executive  level  of  An  Inland  Voyage. 
Here  again  Stevenson  was  affected  by  the 
discomforts  of  his  lonely  travelling,  and  no 
doubt  by  his  poor  health.  Both  records  are 
for  the  most  part  superficial  and  crabbed. 
The  descriptions  of  travelling-companions  are 
conscientious,  but  they  have,  as  Stevenson's 
earliest  admirers  were  the  first  to  remark, 
no  imagination  or  genuine  moulding  :  the 
accounts  are  a  good  deal  like  uninspired  letters 
home.  If  one  thinks  what  Stevenson,  in 
happy  circumstances,  might  have  made  of  the 
tale  of  his  journey,  one  realises  how  lifeless 
are  the  descriptions  given.  They  have  no 
sense  of  actual  contact ;  they  have  lost  grip 
in  losing  charm,  and  might  have  been  written 

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by  somebody  with  far  less  of  an  eye  to  the 
significance  of  the  passing  scene.  Stevenson 
claimed  to  have  been  aware  of  the  prosaic 
character  of  the  records,  and,  indeed,  in  one 
letter  to  Sir  Sidney  Colvin  he  said,  "  It  bored^ 
me  hellishly  to  write  ;  well,  it's  going  to  bore  < 
others  to  read  ;  that's  only  fair."  So  perhaps 
it  is  not  worth  while  to  analyse  such  con- 
fessedly inferior  works.  Only  once  in  The 
Amateur  Emigrant — in  the  anecdote  of  two 
men  who  lodged  perilously  in  New  York — does 
Stevenson's  boyish  love  of  the  picturesquely 
terrible  bring  a  note  of  tense  reality  to  the 
writing.  In  its  own  way  the  account  of  the 
two  men  looking  from  their  bedroom,  through 
the  frame  of  a  seeming  picture,  into  another 
room  where  three  men  are  crouching  in  dark- 
ness, is  a  little  masterpiece  of  horror.  It 
belongs  to  his  romances  rather  than  to  his 
travel-books ;  but  it  is  the  passage  that 
stands  out  most  distinctly  from  the  two  which 
are  under  notice  at  the  moment.  No  other 
scene  in  either  The  Amateur  Emigrant  or 
Across  the  Plains  compares  with  it  for  interest 
or  value. 

in 

Following    upon    his    tedious    journey    to 
America,  and  the  hardships  and  illness  which, 
d  49 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

before  his  marriage,  brought  him  nearly  to 
his  grave,  Stevenson  went  to  the  mountains 
for  health.  The  Silverado  Squatters  was 
written-up  later,  and,  from  Stevenson's  letters 
of  that  time,  it  seems  to  have  been  condemned 
as  uncharacteristic.  But  it  may  have  been 
that,  as  I  think  was  the  case,  Stevenson's 
voyage  to  America  and  his  marriage  consider- 
ably affected  his  outlook.  For  one  thing  he 
really  had  come  into  contact  with  hard  in- 
convenience and  loneliness,  with  a  self-inflicted 
exile  from  his  family  (and  a  hostility  to  his 
marriage  on  their  part  which  existed  more  in 
his  imagination  than  in  fact),  which  matured 
him.  Those  of  us  who  never  take  these 
voyages  out  into  the  unknown,  who  sit  tight 
and  think  comfortably  of  such  things  as 
emigrant  trains,  cannot  realise  with  what 
sudden  effect  the  stubborn  impact  of  realities 
can  work  upon  those  who  actually  venture 
forth.  One  small  instance  will  show  some- 
thing of  the  experience  Stevenson  gained. 
On  the  voyage  he  met  emigrants  who  were 
leaving  Scotland  because  there  was  nothing 
else  for  them  to  do,  because  to  stay  meant 
"  to  starve."  Coming  to  these  men,  and 
hearing  from  them  something  of  the  lives 
they  had  left,  he  touched  a  new  aspect  of  life 
which,    in    spite    of    his    runnings    to-and-fro 

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in  Edinburgh  and  elsewhere,  he  had  never 
appreciated.  He  writes,  in  The  Amateur  Emi- 
grant : 

I  had  heard  vaguely  of  these  reverses  ;  of  whole 
streets  of  houses  standing  deserted  by  the  Tyne,  the 
cellar-doors  broken  and  removed  for  firewood  ;  of 
homeless  men  loitering  at  the  street-corners  of 
Glasgow  with  their  chests  beside  them  ;  of  closed 
factories,  useless  strikes,  and  starving  girls.  But  I 
had  never  taken  them  home  to  me  or  represented 
these  distresses  livingly  to  my  imagination. 

And  when,  in  Across  the  Plains,  he  tells  how 
his  emigrant  train,  going  in  one  direction, 
crowded,  was  met  by  another,  also  crowded, 
returning,  must  that  not  have  reacted  upon  his 
mind  ?  My  own  impression,  which  of  course 
is  based  upon  nothing  more  than  the  apparent 
change  in  Stevenson's  manner  of  writing,  is 
that  The  Silverado  Squatters,  as  we  now  have 
it,  very  much  altered  from  the  condemned 
first  drafts,  represents  the  emergence  of  a  new 
Stevenson,  who,  in  The  Amateur  Emigrant  and 
Across  the  Plains,  had  been  overweighted  by 
the  material  realities  he  had  in  bad  health 
encountered,  and  who,  in  consequence,  had 
failed  to  make  those  accounts  vivid.  The 
Silverado  Squatters  has  more  substance  than 

51 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

its  predecessors.  It  is  much  more  free,  it  is 
almost  entirely  free,  from  affectation.  The 
style  is  less  full  of  trope,  and  may  be  con- 
sidered therefore,  by  some  readers,  as  the  less 
individual.  But  the  matter  and  manner  are 
more  strictly  united  than  hitherto.  We  are 
not  interrupted  by  such  trivial  explosions  of 
sententiousness  as  "  We  must  all  set  our 
pocket- watches  by  the  clock  of  Fate,"  and  in 
the  degree  in  which  the  matter  entirely  "  fills- 
out  "  the  manner  the  book  is  so  far  remark- 
able. It  is  not  generally  regarded  as  con- 
venient to  say  that  Stevenson's  matter  was 
often  thin,  and  his  style  a  mere  ruffle  and 
scent  to  draw  off  the  more  frigid  kind  of 
reader  ;  yet  when  we  come  to  work  so  able 
and  so  unpretentious  as  The  Silverado  Squatters, 
in  which  Stevenson  is  honestly  trying  to  show 
what  he  saw  and  knew  (instead  of  trying  to 
show  the  effect  of  his  address  upon  a  strange 
community)  we  do  seem  to  feel  that  what  has 
gone  before  has  been  less  immediately  the 
natural  work  of  the  writer,  and  more  the 
fancy  sketch  of  the  writer's  own  sense  of  his 
picturesque  figure.  In  one  aspect,  in  its  lack 
of  vivacity,  The  Silverado  Squatters  may  com- 
pare to  disadvantage  with  earlier  work  ;  it 
may  seem,  and  indeed  is  ordinarily  condemned 
as,  less  pungent,  and  less  elastic  ;    but  that 

52 


TRAVEL    BOOKS 

could  only  be  to  those  who  miss  the  fact  that 
Stevenson's  pungency  and  elasticity  were  the 
consequence  of  the  unwearying  revision  to 
which  most  of  his  work  was  subjected.  He 
was  never  a  quick  worker,  never  one  of  those 
careless  writers  whose  ear  approves  while  the 
pen  is  in  motion.  He  had  a  fine  ear,  but  not 
essentially  a  quick  ear  ;  he  was  not  what  is 
sometimes  called  a  "  natural "  writer,  but  with 
devoted  labour  went  again  and  again  through 
what  he  had  written,  revising  it  until  his 
fastidiousness  was  relieved.  This  way  of  work- 
ing, while  it  served  to  allay  what  he  called  the 
"heat  of  composition" — a  heat  which  some 
readers  find  very  grateful  in  other,  less  pains- 
taking writers — has  patent  virtues.  It  is  likely 
to  make  work  more  polished  and  more  finely 
balanced.  Nevertheless,  it  probably  has  the 
effect  of  reducing  the  vigour  and  resilience  of  a 
style.  However  that  may  be,  it  is  a  method 
making  great  demands  upon  a  writer's  deep 
conscientiousness;  and  it  is  not  the  purpose 
of  this  book  to  extol  the  rapid  method  or 
the  quick  ear.  All  we  may  do  at  this 
moment  is  to  suggest  that  Stevenson,  having 
done  well  in  practising  year  after  year  the 
craft  of  the  writer,  had  now  turned  very 
deliberately  and  honourably  in  the  first  year 
of    his    marriage   to   that   other   side   of   the 

53 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

writer's  craft,  the  sober  description,  free  from 
the  amateur's  experimentalism,  of  the  real 
world  as  he  saw  it.  Even  so,  it  is  a  world 
made  smooth  by  his  temperament — his  love  of 
smoothness,  which  one  may  see  exemplified  in  his 
declared  love  of  simple  landscape — and  by  his 
matured  dexterity  in  manipulating  sentences. 
It  is  a  world  seen,  not  with  rich  vitality,  but 
with  the  friendly  interest  of  one  in  a  fair 
haven,  whose  imagination  is  not  fierce  enough 
to  be  a  torture  to  him.  Stevenson  heard,  saw, 
and  really  felt  his  surroundings  ;  his  descrip- 
tions of  sudden  beauties  here  at  Silverado,  as 
later  in  Samoa,  have  the  quiet  religious 
character  which  distinguished  all  his  truest 
intuitions  of  beauty.  Not  his  the  ecstatic 
oneness  with  the  lovely  things  of  Nature 
which  makes  Keats  the  purest  exponent  of 
what  Keats  himself  called  "  that  delicate 
snail's-horn  perception  of  beauty  "  :  Steven- 
son's ecstasy  had  to  be  stirred  by  excitement ; 
he  had  not  the  poet's  open-handed  out-running 
to  the  emotion  of  place.  But  his  sense  of 
the  remoteness  of  the  squatters  of  Silverado, 
his  early-morning  peeps  into  the  wonders  of 
colour  and  aspect  in  a  strange  corner  of  the 
earth,  his  shrewd  understanding  of  sullen 
human  nature,  are  made  clear  to  the  reader 
by  plain  expression.    The  book  is  self-conscious 

54 


TRAVEL     BOOKS 

in  a  good  sense  ;    not,  as  has  often  hitherto 
been  the  case,  in  a  bad  one. 

IV 

If  we  notice  such  a  change  of  attitude  in 
The  Silverado  Squatters,  we  shall  find  it  even 
more  fully  revealed  in  the  volume  of  his  letters 
for  an  American  magazine  which  appeared 
under  the  title  of  In  the  South  Seas.  Some  of 
the  letters  were  withheld,  as  too  tedious ; 
even  now,  the  book  is  frankly  called  dull 
by  many  staunch  admirers  of  Stevenson.  To 
others,  however,  it  must  surely  appear  other- 
wise. It  is,  in  effect,  a  sort  of  glorified  log  ; 
but  a  log  of  real  enterprise  and  adventure  in 
a  marvellous  part  of  the  world.  Stevenson 
heroically  tried  to  penetrate  to  the  heart  of 
the  South  Seas.  He  was  caught  up  by  the 
islands  and  their  people,  and  was  bent  upon 
making  them  known  to  those  who  lived  afar. 
In  the  political  intrigues  so  honestly  described 
in  his  letters,  Stevenson  may,  indeed,  appear 
to  throw  away  the  importance  of  his  own 
genius  ;  but  the  sacrifice  is  made  in  obedience 
to  his  deepest  convictions  of  right.  He  still 
sees  himself  as  the  point  of  focus  ;  but  we  do 
not  resent  that  when  we  find  ourselves  so 
clearly  in  his  train.  Even  while  his  friends 
were    urging    him    to    give    up    the    Samoan 

55 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

politics  which  threatened  to  become  the  King 
Charles's  head  of  his  correspondence,  he 
continued  to  live  amid  the  difficulties  from 
which  he  felt  that  he  could  not  in  honour 
withdraw.  And  although  the  Samoan  period 
had  its  fluctuations  of  talent,  it  was,  upon  the 
whole,  the  time  when  his  boyish  love  of  game 
took  on  a  keener  zest  of  earnest  and  made  him 
indeed  a  man.  The  period  marks  a  further 
decline  in  the  more  strictly  romantic  nature 
of  his  work,  as  we  may  later  on  be  able  to 
discuss  in  comparing  St.  Ives  with  earlier  and 
more  triumphant  experiments  in  that  field  ; 
but  it  opens  the  path  for  the  sober  realism  (if 
that  word  may  here  be  used  without  sinister 
connotation)  of  the  torso  known  as  Weir  of 
Hermiston,  a  fragment  in  which  it  is  usual  to 
find  the  greatest  promise  of  all.  This  is  all  of 
a  piece  with  the  increasing  purpose  of  Steven- 
son's way  in  life.  It  is  a  good  sign  when  a 
professional  author  forsakes  romance  in  favour 
of  reality  ;  for  romance  may  be  conjured  for 
bread-and-butter,  while  reality  withstands  the 
most  persuasive  cajollery.  Stevenson  was  the 
professional  author  in  his  collaborations,  and 
in  such  work  as  St.  Ives  ;  but  in  In  the  South 
Seas  as  in  Weir  he  is  writing  truth  for  the  love 
of  truth,  than  which  there  can  be  no  more 
noble  kind  of  authorship. 

56 


TRAVEL     BOOKS 


In  San  Francisco,  as  we  have  seen,  Steven- 
son chartered  a  schooner-yacht,  and  went  to 
the  South  Seas  in  pursuit  of  health.  On 
board  ship  he  was  always  happy ;  and  he 
made  more  than  one  cruise,  in  different  ships, 
among  the  Gilbert,  Paumotuan,  and  Marquesan 
groups  of  islands.  He  also  stayed  for  periods 
of  varying  length  in  the  three  groups  of 
islands,  became  familiar  with  the  manners  of 
the  natives,  realised  their  distinctions,  and 
made  many  new  friends  among  them.  His 
mind  was  entirely  occupied  with  them  ;  he  saw 
everything  he  could,  and  learned  everything 
he  could,  his  shrewd  Scots  habit  of  inquiry 
filling  him  with  a  satisfied  sense  of  labour. 
A  big  book,  proving  beyond  doubt  the  entire 
peculiarity  of  the  South  Sea  islands  and  their 
islanders,  was  planning  in  his  mind  ;  a  book 
which  would  soundly  establish  his  reputation 
as  something  other  than  a  literary  man  and  a 
teller  of  tales.  In  the  South  Seas,  as  I  have 
already  mentioned,  was  found  dull  by  friendly 
critics  ;  yet  it  is  full  of  observation  and  of 
feeling.  It  is  the  wisest  of  the  travel  books, 
and  the  most  genuine,  for  Stevenson  has  put 
picturesqueness  behind  him  for  what  it  is — 
the  hall-mark  of  the  second-rate  writer ;    and 

57 


M    t 

tn  1 

nrrntoo    |§    duller 
•      he 

hm 

M           •  n!       ■  kin* 

opt*  i          id     ! 

■ft 

the 


the 


a     p*     I 

an  s  is, 

:' 

be 

v  .-;  ft*    I    a-    i    •'.•••:      ;,:.     •      i  .'    ft  r.vrs 

njpr  ax.  u*t  hit 

a  faakkm  rnsoo 

1MB  been  a  fashionable  tra\  sober 

matur  arm. 

lake  a  -st 

tn  a  figure  roust  :ie 

work  no  loner  interests,  Um 


I      B 

our   worship   of   Sevenson   is  founded   upon 

a    sh.  Jet     u,    sa, 

the    appi.  ;    .n<fef   wbo    jr^gj. 

work    '-•'  ind   in   his 

person. 


n 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

the  later  book  dull.  Stevenson  is  duller 
because  he  is  older  :  the  bloom  is  going  :  he 
is  not  equal  intellectually  to  the  task  he  has 
set  himself.  But  there  is  a  greater  sincerity 
in  the  later  travel  books,  an  honest  looking 
upon  the  world.  It  is  surely  better  to  look 
straight  with  clear  eyes  than  to  dress  life  up 
in  a  bundle  of  tropes  and  go  singing  up  the 
pasteboard  mountain.  Stevenson's  admirers 
want  the  song  upon  the  mountain,  because 
they  want  to  continue  the  legend  that  he 
never  grew  up.  They  want  him  to  be  the 
little  boy  with  a  fine  night  of  stars  in  his  eyes 
and  a  pack  upon  his  back,  singing  cheerily 
that  it  is  better  to  travel  hopefully  than  to 
arrive.  That  is  why  Stevenson's  best  work  is, 
relatively  speaking,  neglected  in  favour  of 
work  that  tarnishes  with  the  passing  of  youth. 
And  it  is  all  because  of  the  insatiable  desire  of 
mediocrity  for  the  picturesque.  We  must  be 
surprised  and  startled,  and  have  our  senses 
titillated  by  savours  and  perfumes  ;  we  must 
have  the  strange  and  the  new ;  we  must  have 
a  fashion  to  follow  and  to  forget.  Stevenson 
has  been  a  fashionable  traveller,  and  his  sober 
maturity  is  too  dull ;  he  has  lost  his  charm. 
Well,  we  must  make  a  new  fashion.  Interest 
in  a  figure  must  give  place  to  interest  in  the 
work.     If  the  work  no  longer  interests,  then 

60 


TRAVEL    BOOKS 

our  worship  of  Stevenson  is  founded  upon 
a  shadow,  is  founded,  let  us  say,  upon 
the  applause  of  his  friends,  who  sought  in 
his  work  the  fascination  they  found  in  his 
person. 


61 


IV 

ESSAYS 


There  have  been  some  English  essayists  whose 
writing  is  so  packed  with  thought  that  it  is 
almost  difficult  to  follow  the  thought  in  its 
condensation.  Such  was  Bacon,  wrhose  essays 
were  by  way  of  being  "assays,"  written  so 
tightly  that  each  little  sentence  was  the  com- 
pression of  the  author's  furthest  belief  upon 
that  aspect  of  his  subject,  and  so  that  to  modern 
students  the  reading  of  Bacon's  essays  re- 
sembles the  reading  of  a  whole  volume  printed 
in  Diamond  type.  There  have  been  English 
essayists  whose  essays  are  clear-cut  refinements 
of  truth  more  superficial  or  more  simple.  Such 
was  Addison,  who  wrote  with  a  deliberate  and 
flowing  elegance,  and  whose  essays  Stevenson 
found  himself  unable  to  read.  There  have  been 
such  essayists  as  Hazlitt,  the  shrewTd  sincerity 
of  whose  perceptions  is  expressed  with  so  much 
appropriateness  that  his  essays  are  examples 
of  what  essays  should  be.    There  has  never  been 

62 


ESSAYS 

in  England  a  critic  or  an  essayist  of  quite  the 
same  calibre  as  Hazlitt.    It  was  of  Hazlitt  that 
Stevenson  wrote,  in  words  so  true  that  they 
summarily    arrest    by    their    significance    the 
reader  who  does  not  expect  to  find  in  Walking 
Tours  so  vital  an  appraisement  :    "  Though  we 
are  mighty  fine  fellows  nowadays,  we  cannot 
write  like  Hazlitt."     And,   in  succession,   for 
there  would  be  no  purpose  in  continuing  the 
list  for  its  own  sake,  there  have  been  essayists 
who,    intentionally    resting    their    work   upon 
style  and  upon  the  charm  of  personality,  have 
in  a  thousand  ways  diversified  their  ordinary 
experience,    and    so    have    been    enabled    to 
disclose  as  many  new  aspects  and  delights  to 
the    reader.      Such    an    essayist    was    Lamb. 
Hazlitt,    I   think,    was   the   last   of  the   great 
English  essayists,  because  Hazlitt  sought  truth 
continuously  and  found  his  incomparable  man- 
ner in  the  disinterested  love  of  precision  to 
truth.    But  Lamb  is  the  favourite  ;   and  Lamb 
is  the  English  writer  of  whom  most  readers 
think  first  when  the  word  "  essay  "  is  men- 
tioned.    That  is  because  Lamb  brought  to  its 
highest  pitch  that  personal  and  idiosyncratic 
sort  of  excursion  among  memories  which  has 
created    the    modern    essay,    and    which    has 
severed  it  from  the  older  traditions  of  both 
Bacon  and  Addison.     It  is  to  the  school  of 

63 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

Lamb,  in  that  one  sense,  that  Stevenson 
belonged.  He  did  not  "  write  for  antiquity," 
as  Lamb  did  ;  he  did  not  write  deliberately  in 
the  antique  vein  or  in  what  Andrew  Lang 
called  "  elderly  English  "  ;  but  he  wrote,  with 
conscious  and  anxious  literary  finish,  essays 
which  had  as  their  object  the  conveyance  in  an 
alluring  manner  of  his  own  predilections.  He 
quite  early  made  his  personality  what  Henley 
more  exactly  supposed  that  it  only  afterwards 
became  —  a  marketable  commodity  —  as  all 
writers  of  strong  or  acquired  personality  are 
bound  to  do. 

Since  Stevenson  there  have  been  few  essay- 
ists of  classic  rank,  largely  because  the  essay 
has  lost  ground,  and  because  interest  in  "  pure  " 
literature  has  been  confined  to  work  of  estab- 
lished position  (by  which  is  meant  the  work 
of  defunct  writers).  There  has  been  Arthur 
Symons,  of  whose  following  of  Pater  as  an 
epicure  of  sensation  we  have  heard  so  much 
that  the  original  quality  of  his  fine  work — both 
in  criticism  and  in  the  essay — has  been  ob- 
scured. There  has  been  an  imitator  of  Steven- 
son, an  invalid  lady  using  the  pseudonym 
"  Michael  Fairless  "  ;  and  there  have  been  Mr. 
Max  Beerbohm,  Mr.  E.  V.  Lucas,  Mr.  Belloc, 
Mr.  Chesterton,  Mr.  Street,  Mr.  A.  C.  Benson, 
and  Mr.  Filson  Young.    These  writers  have  all 

64 


ESSAYS 

been  of  the  "  personal  "  school,  frankly  accept- 
ing the  essay  as  the  most  personal  form  in 
literature,  and  impressing  upon  their  work  the 
particular  personal  qualities  which  they  enjoy. 
Some  of  them  have  been  more  robust  than 
others,  some  less  distinguished ;  but  all  of 
them  are  known  to  us  (in  relation  to  their 
essays)  as  writers  of  personality  rather  than  as 
writers  of  abstract  excellence.  An  essay  upon 
the  art  of  the  essay,  tracing  its  development, 
examining  its  purpose,  and  distinguishing 
between  its  exponents,  might  be  a  very 
fascinating  work.  Such  an  essay  is  manifestly 
out  of  place  here  ;  but  it  is  noteworthy  that, 
apart  from  the  distinguished  writers  whose 
names  I  have  given,  nearly  all  the  minor  writers 
(that  is,  nearly  all  those  whose  names  I  have 
not  mentioned)  who  have  produced  essays 
since  the  death  of  Stevenson,  or  who  are 
nowadays  producing  genteel  essays,  have  been 
deeply  under  his  influence.  It  is  further  note- 
worthy that  .most  of  those  who  have  been  so 
powerfully  influenced  have  been  women. 


ii 

From  the  grimly  earnest  abstracts  of  know- 
ledge contributed  by  Bacon  to  the  art  of  the 
essay,  to  the  dilettante  survey  of  a  few  fancies, 
E  65 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

or  memories,  or  aspects  of  common  truth  which 
ordinarily  composed  a  single  essay  by  Steven- 
son, is  a  far  cry.  But  Stevenson,  as  I  have 
said,  belonged  to  the  kind  of  essayist  of  whom 
in  England  Charles  Lamb  is  most  representa- 
tive, and  of  whom  Montaigne  was  most 
probably  his  more  direct  model — the  writer  who 
conveyed  information  about  his  personal  tastes 
J  and  friends  and  ancient  practices  in  a  form 
made  prepossessing  by  a  flavoured  style.  To 
those  traits,  in  Stevenson's  case,  was  added  a 
strong  didactic  strain,  as  much  marked  in  his 
early  essays  as  in  the  later  ones  ;  and  it  is  this 
strain  which  differentiates  Stevenson's  work 
from  that  of  Lamb  and  Montaigne.  Mon- 
taigne's essays  are  the  delicious  vintage  of  a 
ripe  mind  both  credulous  and  sceptical,  grown 
old  enough  to  examine  with  great  candour  and 
curiousness  the  details  of  its  own  vagaries  : 
many  of  Stevenson's  most  characteristic  essays 
are  the  work  of  his  youth,  as  they  proclaim 
by  the  substitution  of  the  pseudo-candour  of 
vanity  for  the  difficult  candour  of  Montaigne's 
shrewd  naivete.  \He  was  thirty  or  thirty-one 
when  the  collection  entitled  Virginibus  Pueris- 
que  was  published.  A  year  later  there  followed 
Familiar  Studies  of  Men  and  Books.  He  was 
only  thirty-seven  (Montaigne  was  thirty-eight 
when  he  "  retired  "  from  active  life  and  began 

66 


ESSAYS 

to  produce  his  essays)  when  his  third  collection, 
Memories  and  Portraits,  obviously  more  sedate 
and  less  open  to  the  charge  of  literary  affecta- 
tion, completed  the  familiar  triology.  Although 
Across  the  Plains  did  not  appear  until  1892, 
many  of  the  essays  which  help  to  form  that 
book  had  earlier  received  periodical  publication 
(the  dated  essays  range  from  1878  to  1888)  ; 
while  some  of  the  papers  posthumously  col- 
lected in  The  Art  of  Writing  belong  to  1881. 
So  it  is  not  unfair  to  say  that  the  bulk  of 
Stevenson's  essays  were  composed  before  he 
reached  the  age  of  thirty-five  ;  and  thirty-five, 
although  it  is  an  age  by  which  many  writers 
have  achieved  fame,  is  not  quite  the  age  by 
which  personality  is  so  much  matured  as  to 
yield  readily  to  condensation.  Therefore  we 
must  not  look,  in  Stevenson's  essays,  for  the  y 
judgments  of  maturity,  although  we  may  find 
in  Virginibus  Puerisque  a  rather  middle-aged 
inexperience.  We  must  rather  seek  the  sig- 
nificance of  these  essays  in  the  degree  in  which 
they  reveal  consciously  the  graces  and  the 
faultless  neglige  of  an  attractive  temperament. 
We  may  look  to  find  at  its  highest  point  the 
illustration  of  those  principles  of  style  which 
Stevenson  endeavoured  to  formulate  in  one 
very  careful  essay  upon  the  subject  (to  the 
chagrin,  I  seem  to  remember,  at  the  time  of  its 

67 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

republication,  of  so  many  critics  who  mis- 
understood the  aim  of  the  essay).  And  we  shall 
assuredly  find  exhibited  the  power  Stevenson 
possessed  of  quoting  happily  from  other  writers. 
Quotation  with  effect  is  a  matter  of  great  skill ; 
and  Stevenson,  although  his  reading  was 
peculiar  rather  than  wide,  drew  from  this  very 
fact  much  of  the  inimitable  effect  obtained  by 
references  so  apt. 

in 
One  note  which  we  shall  find  persistently 
struck  and  re-struck  in  Stevenson's  essays  is 
the  memory  of  childhood.  From  Child's  Play 
to  The  Lantern-Bearers  we  arc  confronted  by  a 
mass  of  material  regarding  one  childhood,  by 
which  is  supported  a  series  of  generalisations 
about  all  children  and  their  early  years.  So  we 
proceed  to  youth,  to  the  story  of  A  College 
Magazine  ;  and  so  to  Ordered  South.  Then  we 
return  again  to  An  Old  Scotch  Gardener  and 
The  Manse,  where  again  that  single  childhood, 
so  well-stored  with  memories,  provides  the 
picture.  Now  it  is  one  thing  for  Stevenson  to\ 
re-vivify  his  own  childhood,  for  that  is  a  very 
legitimate  satisfaction  which  nobody  would 
deny  him  ;  but  it  is  another  thing  for  Steven- 
son, from  that  single  experience  and  with  no 
other    apparent    observation    or    inquiry,    to 

68 


ESSAYS 

generalise  about  all  children.  '  While  he  tells 
us  what  he  did,  in  what  books  and  adventures 
and  happenings  he  found  his  delight,  we  may 
read  with  amusement.  When,  upon  the  other 
hand,  he  says,  "  children  are  thus  or  thus,"  it 
is  open  to  any  candid  reader  to  disagree  with 
Stevenson.  Whether  it  is  that  he  has  set  the 
example,  or  whether  it  is  that  he  merely 
exemplifies  the  practice,  I  cannot  say  ;  but 
Stevenson  is  one  of  those  very  numerous  people 
who  talk  wisely  and  shrewdly  about  children 
in  the  bulk  without  seeming  to  know  anything 
about  them.  These  wiseacres  alternately  under- 
rate and  make  too  ingenious  the  intelligence 
and  the  calculations  of  childhood,  so  that 
children  in  their  hands  seem  to  become  either 
sentimental  barbarians  or  callous  schemers,  but 
are  never,  in  the  main,  children  at  all.  Steven- 
son has  a  few  excellent  words  upon  children  : 
he  admirably  says,  "  It  is  the  grown  people  who 
make  the  nursery  stories  ;  all  the  children  do, 
is  jealously  to  preserve  the  text  "  :  but  I  am 
sorry  to  say  that,  upon  the  whole,  I  can  find 
little  else  that  is  of  value  in  his  general  observa- 
tions. 

It  is  open  to  anybody  to  reconstruct  a  single 
real  childhood  from  Stevenson's  essays,  and  no 
doubt  that  is  a  matter  of  considerable  interest, 
as  anything  which  enables  us  to  understand  a 

69 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

man  is  of  value.  Curiously  enough,  however, 
Stevenson's  essays  upon  the  habits  and  notions 
of  children  seem  to  suggest  a  great  deal  too 
much  thought  about  play,  and  too  little  actual 
play.  They  seem  to  show  him,  as  a  little  boy, 
so  precocious  and  lacking  in  heart,  that  he  is 
watching  himself  play  rather  than  playing.  It 
is  not  the  preliminary  planning  of  play  that 
delights  children,  not  the  academic  invention 
of  games  and  deceits  ;  it  is  the  immediate  and 
enjoyable  act  of  play.  Our  author  shows  us  a 
rather  elderly  child  who,  in  deceiving  himself, 
has  savoured  not  so  much  the  game  as  the 
supreme  cleverness  of  his  own  self-deception. 
That,  to  any  person  who  truly  remembers  the 
state  of  childhood,  may  be  accepted  as  a 
perfectly  legitimate  recollection  ;  and  it  is  so 
far  coherent.  That  his  own  habit  should  be, 
in  these  essays,  extended  to  all  other  children 
whatsoever— in  fact,  to  "  children  "—is  to 
make  all  children  delicate  little  Scots  boys, 
greatly  loved,  very  self-conscious,  and,  in  the 
long  run,  rather  tiresome,  as  lonely,  delicate 
little  boys  incline  to  become  towards  the  end 
of  the  day.  Unfortunately  the  readers  of 
Stevenson's  essays  about  little  boys  have 
mostly  been  little  girls  ;  and  they  are  not 
themselves  children,  but  grown-up  people  who 
are    looking    back    at    their    own    childhood 

70 


ESSAYS 

through  the  falsifying  medium  of  culture  and 
indulgent,  dishonest  memory.  Culture,  in 
dwelling  upon  interpretations  and  upon  pur- 
poses, and  in  seeing  childhood  always  through 
the  refraction  of  consequence,  destroys  interest 
in  play  itself;  and  if  play  is  once  called  in 
question  it  very  quickly  becomes  tedious 
rigmarole. 

Stevenson's  essays  must  thus  be  divided 
into  two  parts,  the  first  descriptive,  the  second 
generalised.  The  first  division,  sometimes 
delightful,  is  also  sometimes  sophisticated,  and 
sometimes  is  exaggerative  of  the  originality 
of  certain  examples  of  play.  The  second  is 
about  as  questionable  as  any  writing  on  chil- 
dren has  ever  been,  because  it  is  based  too 
strictly  upon  expanded  recollections  of  a  single 
abnormal  model.  You  do  not,  by  such  means, 
obtain  good  generalisations. 

IV 

Something  of  the  same  objection  might  be 
urged  against  Stevenson's  rather  unpleasant 
descriptions  of  adolescence.  These  again  are  not 
typical.  Stevenson  himself  was  the  only  youth 
he  ever  knew — he  never  had  the  detachment 
to  examine  disinterestedly  the  qualities  of  any 
person  but  himself — and  we  might  gain  from 
his  descriptions  an  impression  of  youth  which 

71 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

actually  will  not  bear  the  stereoscopic  test  to 
which  we  are  bound  to  submit  all  generalisa- 
tions. To  read  the  essays  with  the  ingenuous 
mind  of  youth  is  to  feel  wisdom,  grown  old  and 
immaculate,  passing  from  author  to  reader.  It 
is  to  marvel  at  this  debonair  philosopher,  who 
finds  himself  never  in  a  quandary,  and  who 
has  the  strategies  of  childhood  and  of  youth 
balanced  in  his  extended  hand.  It  is  to  proceed 
from  childhood  to  youth,  and  from  youth  to 
the  married  state  ;  and  our  adviser  describes 
to  us  in  turn,  with  astonishing  confidence,  the 
simplified  relations,  which  otherwise  we  might 
have  supposed  so  intricate,  of  the  lover,  the 
husband,  and  the  wife.  Nothing  comes  amiss 
to  him  :  love,  jealousy,  the  blind  bow-boy, 
truth  of  intercourse — these  and  many  other 
aspects  of  married  life  are  discoursed  upon 
with  grace  and  the  wistful  sagaciousness  of  a 
decayed  inexperience.  But  when  we  consider 
the  various  arguments,  and  when  we  bring  the 
essays  Virginibtis  Puerisqne  back  to  their 
starting-point,  we  shall  find  that  they  rest  upon 
the  boyish  discovery  that  marriages  occur 
between  unlikely  persons.  Stevenson  has  not 
been  able  to  resist  the  desire  to  institute  an 
inquiry  into  the  reasons.  He  cannot  suppose 
that  these  persons  love  one  another ;  and  yet 
why   else   should   they   marry  ?     Well,   he   is 

72 


ESSAYS 

writing  an  essay,  and  not  a  sociological  study, 
so  that — as  the  result  of  his  inquiry — we  must 
not  expect  to  receive  a  very  distinct  contribu- 
tion to  our  knowledge.    We  may  prepare  only 
to  be  edified,  to  be,  perhaps,  greatly  amused 
by  a  young  man  who  may  at  least  shock  us,  or 
stir  us,  if  he  is  unable  to  show  this  fruitful 
source   of  comedy  in  action.     We  are   even, 
possibly,  alert  to  render  our  author  the  compli- 
ment   of   preliminary    enjoyment,    before    we 
have  come  to  his  inquiry.     What  Stevenson 
has  to  tell  us  about  marriage,  however,  is  a 
commonplace  ;    even  if  it  is  a  commonplace 
dressed  and  flavoured.     It  is  that  "  marriage 
is  a  field  of  battle — not  a  bed  of  roses  "  ;   and 
it  is  that   "  to  marry   is  to  domesticate  the 
Recording   Angel."      "  Alas  !  "    as   Stevenson 
says  of  another  matter,  "  If  that  were  all !  " 

I  wonder  what  it  is  that  makes  such  phrases 
(for  they  are  no  more  than  phrases,  phrases 
which  are  not  true  to  experience,  and  which 
therefore  can  have  no  value  as  propositions  or 
as  explanations)  give  so  much  pleasure  to  such 
a  number  of  readers.  How  can  we  explain  it, 
unless  it  be  simply  by  the  explanation  that 
Stevenson  has  been  idolised  ?  This  book, 
Virginibus  Puerisque,  has  been  a  favourite  for 
many  years,  sanguine,  gentle,  musical,  in  the 
deepest    sense    unoriginal.      It    is    the    most 

73 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

quoted  ;  it  is  the  one  which  most  certainly 
may  be  regarded  as  the  typical  book  of  Steven* 
son's  early  period.  Surely  it  is  because  a  half- 
truth,  a  truth  that  may  be  gobbled  up  in  a 
phrase  and  remembered  only  as  a  phrase,  is 
easier  to  accept  than  a  whole  truth,  upon  which 
the  reader  must  engage  his  attention  ?  It 
must,  I  mean,  be  the  trope  that  lures  readers  of 
Virginibus  Puerisque  into  acceptance  of  thought 
so  threadbare  and  ill-nourished.  Such  an 
essay  as  /Es  Triplex  seems  by  its  air  to  hold  all 
the  wisdom  of  the  ages,  brought  steadfastly 
to  the  contemplation  of  the  end  to  which  all 
must  come.  If  it  is  read  sentimentally,  with 
the  mind  swooning,  it  may  give  the  reader  the 
feeling  that  he  has  looked  upon  the  bright  face 
of  danger  and  seen  death  as  no  such  bad  thing. 
For  a  moment,  as  it  might  be  by  a  drug,  he 
has  received  some  stimulation  which  is  purely 
temporary.  The  essay  has  not  changed  his 
thought  of  death  ;  it  has  not  transformed  his 
fear  of  death  into  an  heroic  love  ;  it  slides 
imperceptibly,  unheeded,  from  his  memory, 
and  remains  dishevelled  for  ever  as  "  that 
rather  fine  thing  of  Stevenson's,"  for  which  he 
never  knows  where  to  look.  Only  its  phrases 
remain  for  quotation,  for  use  in  calendars, 
common  thoughts  turned  into  remembrances 
and  mottoes  ready  for  the  rubricator.     When 

74 


ESSAYS 

an  ordinary  person  says,  "  It's  nice  to  have 
something  to  look  forward  to,"  Stevenson  is 
ready  with,  "  It  is  better  to  travel  hopefully 
than  to  arrive,  and  the  true  success  is  to 
labour."  There  is  all  the  difference  between 
this  and  that  advice  of  Browning's  that  "  a 
man's  reach  should  exceed  his  grasp."  Steven- 
son has  not  sought  to  invigorate  the  toiler,  he 
has  not  caught  up  with  optimism  the  spirit  of 
mankind  :  what  he  has  done  is  to  make  a  phrase 
for  the  boudoir.  There  is  no  philosophic 
optimism  in  Stevenson's  essays  :  there  is 
sometimes  high  spirits,  and  sometimes  there  is 
a  cheerful  saying  ;  but  at  heart  the  "  teaching  " 
of  these  things  is  as  prosaic  as  is  the  instruction 
of  any  lay  preacher. 

When  the  more  solemn  sort  of  subject,  such 
as  death,  comes  to  be  dealt  with,  we  find 
Stevenson,  the  actor,  falling  into  the  feeling  of 
his  own  intonations,  gravely  reassuring,  like  a 
politician  explaining  a  defeat.  When  he  is 
describing  acts  of  bravery,  as  in  The  English 
Admirals,  his  love  of  courage  rises  and  his 
feelings  seem  to  glow  ;  but  the  phrases  with 
which  he  adorns  the  tale  and  with  which 
eventually  he  points  the  moral  are  phrases 
made  to  be  read,  not  phrases  that  break  from 
his  full  heart.  They  are  not  the  phrases  made, 
will  he  nill  he,  by  his  enthusiasm  ;    they  are 

75 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

such  phrases  as  are  publicly  conveyed  from  one 
king  or  statesman  or  commander  to  another 
upon  the  occasion  of  some  notable  event.  I  do 
not  mean  that  they  are  as  baldly  expressed, 
though  I  think  they  are  often  as  baldly  con- 
ceived. They  are  very  handsomely  expressed, 
too  handsomely  for  the  occasion,  if  one  agrees 
with  Bob  Acres  that  "  the  sound  should  be  an 
echo  of  the  sense."  Although  it  may  be  true 
that,  as  Stevenson  says,  "  people  nowhere  de- 
mand the  picturesque  so  much  as  in  their  virtues," 
for  a  self-respecting  author  to  give  them  the 
picturesque  for  that  reason  seems  to  me  a  most 
immoral  and,  in  the  end,  a  most  ill-judged 
proceeding.  Cultivation  of  the  picturesque, 
fondness  for  phrase,  is  inevitably  productive  of 
falseness  ;  it  is  literary  gesture,  a  cultivable 
habit,  such  as  the  habit  of  any  vain  person  who 
flickers  his  hands  or  persistently  turns  the 
"  better  side  "  of  his  face  or  character  to  the 
beholder.  The  first  instinctive  vanity  develops 
rapidly  into  a  pose,  and  pose  can  never  be 
much  more  than  amusing.  Appropriateness  of 
phrase  to  meaning  is  lost  in  the  sense  of  phrase, 
honesty  of  intention  does  not  suffice  to  cover 
inexactitude  of  expression.  Unconsciously, 
Stevenson  often  approved  a  phrase  that  ex- 
pressed something  not  in  exact  accordance 
with  his  belief ;  he  was  misled  by  its  splendour 


ESSAYS 

or  its  picturesqueness  or  its  heroic  virtue.  So  it 
is  that  the  parts  of  Stevenson's  essays  which 
at  first  drew  and  held  us  breathless  with  a  sort 
of  wonder,  cease  at  length  to  awaken  this 
wonder,  and  even  seem  to  degenerate  into 
exhibitions  of  knack,  as  though  they  were  the 
sign  of  something  wholly  artificial  in  the  writer. 
They  grow  tedious,  like  the  grimaces  of  a  spoilt 
child ;  and  we  no  longer  respond  to  that 
spurious  galvanism  which  of  old  we  mistook 
for  a  thrill  of  nature. 

To  Stevenson's  less  elaborate  essays  the 
mind  turns  with  greater  pleasure.  We  are 
displeased  in  Virginibus  Puerisque  by  the 
excess  of  manner  over  matter  :  wherever  the 
matter  is  original  the  manner  is  invariably  less 
figured.  Our  trouble  then  is  that,  as  in  the  case 
of  such  essays  as  The  Foreigner  at  Home  and 
Pastoral,  where  the  matter  is  of  great  interest, 
there  is  produced  the  feeling  that  Stevenson 
has  not  developed  it  to  its  fullest  extent.  His 
essay  on  the  English,  to  take  the  first  of  the 
two  we  have  named,  is  partial  and  incomplete 
— faults  due  to  lack  of  sympathy.  Its  incom- 
pleteness seems  to  me  more  serious  than  its 
partiality  ;  and  by  "  incompleteness  "  I  do 
not  mean  that  it  should  have  been  more 
exhaustive,  but  that  it  does  not  appear  quite 
to  work  out  its  own  thesis,  but  presents  an  air 

77 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

of  having  been  finished  on  a  smaller  scale  than 
is  attempted  in  other  parts.  In  exactly  the 
same  way,  the  Pastoral  engages  our  interest 
completely,  and  then,  for  the  reason,  it  would 
seem,  that  the  author's  memory  runs  short,  the 
portrait  is  left  suddenly.  It  is  not  left  in  such 
a  state  that  the  reader's  imagination  fills  in 
every  detail :  the  effect  is  again  one  of  trunca- 
tion. 

The  best  of  these  essays  are  probably  those 
two,  which  are  written  in  the  vein  of  Hazlitt,  on 
Talk  and  Talkers.  Here  the  matter  is  ample  ; 
and  the  manner  is  studiously  moderate.  I 
note,  by  the  way,  that  Sir  Sidney  Colvin 
mentions  the  composition  of  this  essay  at 
about  the  time  of  Stevenson's  proposal  for 
writing  a  life  of  Hazlitt ;  so  that  it  would  not 
be  very  reckless  to  say  that  the  manner  of 
Talk  and  Talkers  may  be  due  to  a  contemporary 
familiarity  with  Hazlitt's  essays.  However 
that  may  be,  these  two  essays  in  particular 
have  distinguished  qualities.  They  have  point, 
character,  and  thought. 


The  two  essays  which  conclude  Memories 
and  Portraits,  respectively  entitled  A  Gossip  on 
Romance  and  A  Humble  Remonstrance,  are  by 

78 


ESSAYS 

way  of  being  essays  in  constructive  criticism, 
showing  why  the  novel  of  incident  (i.e.  the 
romance)  is  superior  to  the  domestic  novel. 
The  former  belongs  to  1882,  the  latter  to  1884. 
A  Gossip  on  Romance  expresses  for  "  Robinson 
Crusoe  "  a  greater  liking  than  that  held  for 
"  Clarissa  Harlowe,"  and  concludes  with  great 
praise  of  Scott;  A  Humble  Remonstrance  shows 
Stevenson  entering,  with  something  of  the  Father 
Damien  manner,  into  a  debate  which  was  at 
that  time  taking  place  between  Sir  Walter 
Besant,  Mr.  Henry  James,  and  Mr.  YV.  D. 
Howells.  Besant's  arguments  were  contained 
in  an  essay  on  "The  Art  of  Fiction,"  which 
may  still  be  had  as  a  negligible  little  book ;  Mr. 
Henry  James's  reply,  a  wholly  delightful 
performance,  is  reprinted  in  "  Partial  Por- 
traits." The  point  was  that  Besant  wanted  to 
express  his  amiable  and  workmanlike  notions, 
that  Mr.  Henry  James  preferred  to  talk  about 
the  art  of  fiction,  and  that  Stevenson,  who 
seems  never  to  have  felt  entire  approval  of  the 
subject-matter  of  Mr.  James's  books,  felt  called 
upon  to  rally  to  the  defence  of  his  own  practices. 
Unfortunately  he  could  not  do  this  without 
savaging  Mr.  James  and  Mr.  Howells,  and  this, 
while  it  makes  the  essay  a  rather  honest, 
unaffected  piece  of  work,  does  not  increase  its 
lucidity. 

79 


But  we  may  very  well  turn  at  this  point  to 
notice  that  Stevenson's  one  legitimate  book  of 
essays  on  specifically  literary  subjects — Fami- 
liar Studies  of  Men  and  Books — illustrates  very 
well  his  attitude  to  the  writers  in  whom  he  was 
interested  to  the  point  of  personal  study.  The 
nine  subjects  of  the  essays  in  this  book  do  not 
seem  to  us  at  this  time  a  specially  interesting 
selection  ;  and  indeed  the  essays  themselves 
are  not  remarkable  for  originality  or  insight. 
It  does  show,  however,  some  range  of  under- 
standing to  wish  to  wrrite  upon  subjects  so 
varied  as  Hugo,  Burns,  Whitman,  Thoreau, 
Villon,  Charles  of  Orleans,  Pepys,  and  John 
Knox.  It  is  true  that  Stevenson  (the  Hugo 
essay  is  perhaps  an  exception  to  this)  never 
gets  very  far  away  from  his  "  authorities  "  or 
from  quotations  from  the  works  of  his  subject ; 
and  that  his  criticism  is  "  safe  "  rather  than 
personal ;  but  these  facts,  while  they  interfere 
with  the  value  of  the  essays  as  essays,  give 
them  the  interest  of  being  single  and  without 
parallel  in  Stevenson's  output.  They  show 
that  he  was  a  good  enough  journeyman  critic 
to  stand  beside  those  who  write  essays  on 
literary  subjects  for  the  reviews.  They  con- 
form, as  far  as  I  can  tell,  to  the  standard  of 
such  work  ;  they  are  useful  and  plain,  and 
some  of  them,  but  not  all,  are  interesting.     In 

80 


ESSAYS 

each  case  the  interest  is  chiefly  a  moral  in- 
terest; it  is  the  "teaching"  of  the  various 
writers,  the  moral  vagaries  of  the  different 
delinquents,  that  engage  the  critic's  attention. 
It  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  Stevenson  was 
not  primarily  a  literary  critic.  His  flashes  of 
insight  were  more  remarkable  than  his  con- 
sidered judgments,  because,  as  I  have  suggested 
elsewhere  in  this  book,  he  had  not  the  kind  of 
mind  that  takes  delight  in  pursuing  a  subject 
to  its  logical  conclusion.  He  had  the  inventive, 
but  not  the  constructive  mind,  and  he  had 
the  nervous  and  delicate  man's  intolerance  of 
anything  requiring  sustained  intellectual  effort. 
I  imagine  that  in  reading  books  he  "  read  for 
the  story,"  and  that  his  perception  of  qualities 
in  the  telling  (apart  from  the  excellence  of  the 
story)  was  spasmodic.  It  may  be  noticed  as  a 
defect  in  Familiar  Studies  of  Men  and  Books 
that  no  character,  apart  from  traditional  charac- 
ter, as  in  the  case  of  Pepys,  emerges  from  any 
of  the  essays  :  we  are  given  accounts  and 
criticisms  of,  for  example,  Burns  ;  but  we  do 
not  have  them  flashed  out  at  us  as  real  men. 
Stevenson,  I  think,  had  a  very  poor  sense  of 
character.  In  all  these  essays  there  is  the  same 
defect,  an  air  of  flatness,  of  colourlessness, 
such  as  we  may  find  in  any  case  where  character 
has  not  been  imagined. 
f  81 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

Stevenson   also   required   idiosyncrasy  in   a 
character  before  he  could  grasp  it.    There  was 
for  him  no  interest  in  normality  of  character, 
which  somehow  he  did  not  grasp.     Once  he 
apprehended  a  personality  all  was  different; 
then,  every  touch  told,  as  we  may  see  in  the 
picture  of  old  Weir,  or  even  in  Silver.     If  he 
grasped  the  character  he  could  see  it  admirably  ; 
but   it  had  to  be  "knobbly,"  for  quiet,   un- 
picturesque  men  baffled  his  powers  of  repro- 
duction.     He    could    admire,    but    he    could 
not  draw  them.    There  is  a  very  curious  in- 
stance   of   this    in   the    Memoir    of    Fleeming 
Jenkin,  which  is  worth  commenting  on  here. 
That  memoir  is  in  some  ways  perfunctory ;  as 
a  whole  it  belongs  to  the  same  uncharacterised 
class    of    portrait-studies    as   these   Men   and 
Books.     Jenkin   is   poorly  drawn,  so   that  he 
might  be   anybody.     But  there  are   passages 
in   the  Memoir   which   are   the   most   moving 
passages   that   Stevenson   ever   wrote.      They 
do  not  relate  to  Fleeming  Jenkin,  who  is  all 
out  of  focus :   they  relate  to  the   parents  of 
Jenkin  and  his  wife.     Jenkin's  personality,  it 
would  seem,  was  never  grasped  by  Stevenson  ; 
these  vignettes,  on  the  other  hand,  are  quite 
poignantly  real  and  quite  pathetically  beauti- 
ful. 


82 


ESSAYS 


VI 

The  characteristics  of  Stevenson's  essays  are 
in  general,  as  I  have  tried  to  indicate,  character- 
istics of  manner  rather  than  of  matter.  Happy 
notions  for  slight  papers  need  not  be  detailed — 
there  are  many,  which  have  in  their  time 
provoked  great  enthusiasm,  and  which  will 
continue  to  give  pleasure  because  they  are  a 
little  whimsical  in  conception  and  very  finished 
in  performance.  These  essays  owe  their  charm 
to  the  fact  that  Stevenson  was  often  writing 
about  himself,  for  he  always  wrote  entertain- 
ingly about  himself.  He  was  charmed  by 
himself,  in  a  way  that  the  common  egoist  has 
not  the  courage  or  possibly  the  imagination  to 
be.  Henley  will  tell  you  that  Stevenson  took 
every  mirror  into  his  confidence  ;  an  amusing 
and  not  at  all  distressing  piece  of  vanity.  His 
whole  life  was  deliciously  joined  together  by 
his  naive  and  attractive  vanity.  His  essays, 
the  most  personal  work  of  any  he  wrote,  are 
filled  with  the  same  vanity  which  brought  him 
(and  kept  him)  such  good  friends.  It  was  not 
the  unhappy  vanity  that  drives  friends  away, 
that  is  suspicious  of  all  kindness  :  Stevenson 
had  been  too  much  petted  as  a  child  to  permit 
of  such  wanton  and  morbid  self-distrust.  He 
was   confident,    but   not   vulgarly   confident ; 

83 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

vain,  to  the  extent  of  being  more  interested  in 
himself  than  in  anything  else  ;  but  he  was  not 
dependent  upon  his  earnings,  and  success  came 
early  enough  to  keep  sweet  his  happy  com- 
placency. His  essays  show  these  things  as 
clearly  as  do  his  letters.  His  essays  "  are  like 
milestones  upon  the  wayside  of  his  life,"  and 
they  are  so  obviously  milestones,  that  all 
readers  who  are  fascinated  by  autobiography, 
particularly  if  it  be  veiled,  have  been  drawn  to 
Stevenson  as  they  are  drawn  to  an  attractive, 
laughing  child.  My  own  opinion  is  that 
Stevenson  has  sent  his  lovers  away  no  richer  than 
they  came  ;  but  there  are  many  who  could  not 
share  that  view,  because  there  are  many  who 
are  thankful  to  him  for  telling  them  that  "it  is 
better  to  be  a  fool  than  to  be  dead."  I  think 
Stevenson  did  not  know  what  it  was  to  be 
either  a  fool  or  dead.  That  state  of  nervous 
high  spirits  which  is  a  part  of  his  natural 
equipment  for  the  battle,  which  lent  even  his 
most  artificial  writing  a  semblance  of  vivacity, 
prevented  him  from  ever  being  dead  (in  the 
sense  of  supine  or  dull,  as  I  suppose  he  meant 
it)  ;  and  I  cannot  persuade  myself  that 
Stevenson  was  ever  a  fool. 

It  is  for  these  reasons  that  I  regard  all  such 
phrases  in  Stevenson's  essays  as  pieces  of 
purple,  as  things  which,  however  they  please 

84 


.     ESSAYS 

some  readers,  are  in  themselves  inherently 
false  and  artificial.  That  they  were  consciously 
false  I  do  not  believe.  Stevenson,  I  am  sure, 
had  the  phrase-making  instinct :  such  a  thing 
cannot  be  learned,  as  anyone  may  see  by 
examining  the  work  of  merely  imitative  writers  : 
it  is  a  part  of  Stevenson's  nature  that  he 
crystallised  into  a  figure  some  obvious  half- 
truth  about  life,  and  love,  and  fate,  and  the 
gimcrack  relics  of  old  heroisms.  It  is  equally 
a  part  of  his  nature  that  he  fell  naturally  into 
a  sententious  habit  of  moral  utterance.  Moral- 
ity— as  we  may  realise  from  the  lengthy 
fragment  called  Lay  Morals — preoccupied  him. 
But  it  was  morality  expressed  with  the  wagged 
head  of  sententious  dogma.  Finally,  it  comes 
to  be  true  that,  by  whatever  means,  by  what- 
ever labour  the  art  was  attained,  Stevenson 
was,  above  everything  else,  a  writer.  "  There 
is  no  wonder,"  said  Henley,  in  the  notorious 
review  of  Mr.  Graham  Balfour's  biography, 
"  there  is  no  wonder  that  Stevenson  wrote  his 
best  in  the  shadow  of  the  Shade  ;  for  writing 
his  best  was  very  life  to  him." 

VII 

As  a  writer,  then,  let  Stevenson  be  regarded 
in  the  conclusion  of  this  chapter  upon  his  essays. 
As  a  theoretical  writer  he  gives  his  deliberate 

85 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

example  in  that  one  essay  On  some  technical 
elements  of  Style  in  Literature  ;  and  his  theories 
have  aroused  bitter  comment.  Because  Steven- 
son found  certain  combinations  of  consonants 
recurrent  in  selected  passages,  it  was  assumed 
by  his  critics  that  he  lived  in  a  state  of  the 
dreariest  kind  of  pattern-making.  That,  of 
course,  was  a  mistake  on  the  part  of  Stevenson's 
critics,  because  Stevenson  was  a  prolific  writer, 
and  could  never  have  afforded  the  time  to  be 
a  mere  hanger-on  of  words.  What  Stevenson 
did  was  first  to  realise  that  a  prose  style  is  not 
the  result  of  accident.  He  saw  that  an  evil  use 
of  adjective  and  over-emphasis  weakened  style ; 
and  he  realised  that  a  solved  intricacy  of 
sentence  was  part  of  the  instinctive  cunning 
by  which  a  good  writer  lures  readers  to  follow 
him  with  ever-growing  interest  into  the  most 
remote  passages  of  his  work.  He  was  a  careful 
writer,  who  revised  with  scrupulous  care  ;  and 
some  sentences  of  Stevenson,  meandering  most 
sweetly  past  their  consonants  and  syllables 
and  "  knots,"  to  their  destined  conclusion,  are 
still,  and  I  suppose  always  will  be  capable  of 
yielding,  a  pure  delight  to  the  ear.  Those  who 
do  not  take  Stevenson's  pains  will  qualify  his 
denunciation  of  the  "  natural  "  writer,  because 
a  natural  writer  is  one  whose  ear  is  quick  and 
fairly  true  :    he  is  not  necessarily  producing 

86 


ESSAYS 

"  the  disjointed  babble  of  the  chronicler,"  but 
he  is  incapable  of  the  fine  point  of  exquisite 
rhythm  which  we  may  find  in  Stevenson's  best 
writing.  That  writing,  various  though  it  is 
(various,  I  mean,  in  "  styles  "),  remains  true 
to  its  musical  principles.  It  is  the  result  of 
trained  ear  and  recognition  of  language  as  a 
conscious  instrument.  It  has  innumerable, 
most  insidious  appeals,  to  disregard  which  is  a 
task  for  the  barbarian.  It  is  patterned,  it  is 
built  of  sounds, — "  one  sound  suggests,  echoes, 
demands,  and  harmonises  with  another," — all 
in  accordance  with  the  expressed  theory  of 
Stevenson.  We  will  grant  it  the  delights, 
because  they  are  incontestable.  Let  us  now 
question  whether  it  has  not  one  grave  defect. 

All  style  which  is  so  intricately  patterned,  so 
reliant  upon  its  music,  its  rhythm,  its  balance, 
gratifies  the  ear  in  the  way  that  old  dance 
music  gratifies  the  ear.  The  minuet  and  the 
saraband,  stately  as  they  are,  have  their  slow 
phrases,  and  flow  to  their  clear  resolution  with 
immemorial  dignity ;  they  are  patterns  of 
closely-woven  figured  style,  than  which  we 
could  hardly  have  an  illustration  more  fit. 
They  are  examples  of  style  less  subtle  than 
Stevenson's  ;  but  in  Stevenson's  writing  there 
is  no  violence  to  old  airs  and  the  old  order. 
His  writing  is  only  "  a  linked  sweetness  long 

87 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

drawn  out,"  and  in  its  differentiation  from  the 
old  way  of  writing  is  to  be  found,  not  a  revolu- 
tion, not  anarchy,  but  a  weakness.  Stevenson's 
style,  graceful,  sustained  though  it  is,  lacks 
power.  It  has  finesse  ;  but  it  has  no  vigour. 
The  passages  to  which  one  turns  are  passages  of 
delicious,  stealthy  accomplishment.  They  are 
passages  which  suggest  the  slow  encroaching 
fingers  of  the  in-coming  tide,  creeping  and 
whispering  further  and  further  up  the  sand  ; 
and  our  watchful  delight  in  the  attainment  of 
each  sentence  is  the  delight  we  feel  in  seeing 
the  waves  come  very  gently,  pushed  on  by  an 
incalculable  necessity,  until  their  length  is 
reached  and  their  substance  is  withdrawn. 
There  is  no  tempestuous  certainty  in  Steven- 
son's writing  ;  there  is  not  the  magnificent 
wine  of  Shakespeare's  prose,  which  has  marvel- 
lous strength  as  well  as  its  delicate  precision. 
Stevenson's  style,  clearly  invalidish  in  his 
imitators,  has  in  itself  the  germs  of  their 
consumption.  It  is  quiet,  pretty,  picturesque, 
graceful ;  it  has  figure  and  trope  in  plenty  ;  but 
it  has  no  vehemence.  You  may  find  in  it  an 
amazing  variety  of  pitch  and  cadence  ;  but  at 
length  the  care  that  has  made  it  betrays  the 
artificer  ;  at  length  the  reader  will  look  in  vain 
for  the  rough  word.  That  is  the  pity  of 
Stevenson's   style — not   that   he   should   have 

88 


ESSAYS 

sought  it,  and  exercised  it,  and  made  language 
quite  the  most  important  thing  in  his  writing  ; 
but  that  his  very  artfulness  should  have  yielded 
him  no  protection  against  the  demand  of  nature 
for  something  which  no  care  or  cunning  can 
ever  put  into  style  that  does  not  carry  its 
own  impetus. 


89 


V 

POEMS 

i 
The  Scottish  temperament  is  compounded  of 
such  various  and  unlikely  ingredients  that 
very  many  of  those  who  charge  Scots  with 
hypocrisy  and  sentimentality  are  guilty  of 
something  like  frigid  intolerance.  Hypocrisy, 
in  the  sense  of  self-deception,  is  too  common  a 
thing  among  all  men  to  be  charged  particularly 
against  the  Scots ;  sentimentality,  in  the 
sense  of  false  or  artificially  heightened  emotion, 
is,  in  the  same  way,  the  prerogative  of  no 
particular  nation  or  body  of  persons.  It  is 
very  likely  true  that  hypocrisy  and  senti- 
mentality are  among  the  failings  of  the  Scots  : 
but  among  their  virtues  may  be  found  both 
integrity  and  sincerity  as  well  as  loyalty  to  an 
idea  or  to  a  conviction.  What  points  the  con- 
tradiction is  that  the  Scots,  in  every  meaning 
of  that  word,  are  very  sensible.  They  are 
very  clearly  aware  of  all  circumstances  tending 
to  their  own  advantage  ;   they  are  very  appre- 

90 


P  O  E  M  S 

ciative  of  good  actions  contributed  by  other 
persons  to  that  advantage  ;  and  they  are  very 
easily  moved.  They  are  easily  moved  by 
encounter,  in  unusual  circumstances,  with  the 
Scots  tongue  (by  which  I  mean  that  accent  in 
speaking  English,  and  those  terms,  gram- 
matical or  verbal,  which  are  peculiar  to  Scots- 
men) ;  and  they  are  extraordinarily  moved  by 
the  word  "  home,"  by  the  thought  of  family 
and  by  certain  sounds,  such  as  music  heard 
across  water,  or  particular  notes  in  the  voice 
of  a  singer — especially  when  the  singer  happens 
to  be  the  person  who  is  moved.  But  they  are 
not  singular  in  these  susceptibilities,  although 
they  may  provide  a  notorious  example  of 
them.  In  each  case  the  emotion  is  easy, 
sympathetic,  instantaneous  ;  in  each  case  it 
takes  the  form  of  tears.  Those  who  cry  are, 
as  it  were,  drunken  with  a  certain  impulse  of 
humility  ;  they  may  be  as  distressing  as  a 
drunken  person  grown  maudlin  ;  but,  super- 
ficial though  it  is,  their  emotion  is  entirely 
genuine.  It  is  of  no  use  to  call  it  sentimen- 
tality :  it  is  simply  objectless  emotion,  which 
may  not  be  very  stirring  to  those  who  do  not 
feel  it,  but  which  is  not  therefore  to  be  in- 
stantly condemned.  It  happens  to  be  a 
tradition  that  Englishmen  do  not  publicly 
show  affection  or  ^\  _ep  :    how  hard  it  is  that 

91 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

we  should  weigh  in  the  balance  of  our  own 
traditions  the  practices  of  our  neighbours  ! 

This  point,  however,  is  a  most  interesting 
one,  because  it  helps  to  explain  the  dearth  of 
great  Scottish  poets,  and  because  it  helps  to 
explain  why,  in  spite  of  every  good  intention, 
Stevenson  never  made  any  impression  upon 
English  readers  by  his  three  volumes  of  mis- 
cellaneous "  grown-up  "  poetry.  The  fault 
was  not  a  personal  one  ;  but  was  a  part  of  the 
national  character.  The  Scots  are  so  easily 
moved,  and  their  tears  and  enthusiasms  flow 
so  freely,  that  the  authenticity  of  tears  and 
enthusiasms  is  even  disputed,  and  the  power 
to  go  deeper  is  not  vouchsafed  them.  They 
appear  to  us,  as  the  Master  of  Ballantrae 
appeared  to  Ephraim  Mackellar,  compounded 
of  "  outer  sensibility  and  inner  toughness  "  ; 
and  Burns,  the  only  great  Scottish  poet, 
triumphed  because  these  constituents  were 
granted  to  him  in  more  overflowing  and  un- 
diluted measure  than  has  been  the  case  with 
any  other  Scotsman.  Outer  sensibility  and 
inner  toughness  is  a  phrase  that  would  label 
a  good  many  Englishmen  ;  but  of  Englishmen 
the  mixture  makes  charlatans,  whereas  of 
Scotsmen  it  makes  journalists  and  novelists 
and  lawyers  of  extraordinary  skill  and  astonish- 
ing industry.     That  is   why  it   seems  to  me 

92 


POEMS 

important  that  we  should  be  slow  to  charge 
a  race  that  is  impressionable  with  the  in- 
sincerity (conscious  or  unconscious)  which  we 
might  suspect  in  individual  Englishmen.  The 
failure  of  a  Scotsman  to  be  a  great  poet  is 
another  matter. 

ii 
Stevenson's  poems  are  contained  in  four 
small  volumes — Underwoods,  Ballads,  Songs  of 
Travel  (a  collection  made  by  himself,  but 
published  posthumously),  and  A  Child's  Garden 
of  Verses.  Of  the  four  volumes  the  one  that 
has  enjoyed  most  popularity,  as  well  as  most 
critical  esteem,  is  A  Child's  Garden  of  Verses, 
which  book,  although,  by  Stevenson's  account, 
very  easily  produced,  has  the  value  of  being 
unique  in  scheme  and  contents.  The  other 
volumes  have  less  in  them  of  wide  interest, 
and  so  they  are  less  generally  read.  Certain 
poems,  such  as  the  Requiem  ("  Under  the  wide 
and  starry  sky  ")  and  The  Vagabond  ("  Give 
to  me  the  life  I  love  ")  arise  whenever  the  name 
of  Stevenson  is  fondly  mentioned  ;  they  are, 
as  it  were,  the  stock-in-trade  of  the  conversa- 
tional anthologist,  who,  in  the  same  spirit,  will 
have  suggested  to  him  by  the  name  of  Meredith 
the  words,  "  Enter  these  enchanted  woods, 
Ye  who  dare."    These  two  poems  are  not  the 

93 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

best  poems  Stevenson  wrote  ;  but  they  are 
handy  for  remembrance.  That  explains  their 
frequent  employment ;  that,  and  their  appro- 
priateness to  the  conventional  idea  of  Steven- 
son, which  is  based  upon  a  sentimental  and 
mediocre  marvel  at  the  unconventionally  of 
the  open  road. 

The  best  poems  Stevenson  wrote  are  his 
ballads.  With  a  story  to  tell,  he  was  keener  to 
represent  truly  the  subject-matter  upon  which 
he  was  engaged ;  and  this  engendered  the 
"  heat  of  composition,"  if  it  did  not  always 
spring  from  the  native  heat  or  intensity  of  in- 
spiration. The  ballads,  especially  Ticonderoga, 
have  a  swift  effectiveness  and  an  adherence  to 
theme  which  is  not  so  marked  in  the  poems 
provoked  by  occasional  events.  In  these  the 
rhyme  and  form  sometimes  lead  the  way,  and 
the  poems  become  exercises  in  friendly  versi- 
fication, without  much  feeling,  and  writh  only 
that  Scottish  affectionateness  to  which  refer- 
ence has  already  been  made.  Examples  of 
impoverished  emotion  may  be  found  in  the 
two  poems  expressing  gladness  at  visits  from 
Mr.  Henry  James.  As  cheerful  little  outbursts 
of  pleasure,  such  poems,  in  manuscript,  would 
be  interesting,  even  delightful  :  as  poems  they 
fall  short  of  complete  success,  even  in  their 
own  class,  for  the  reason  that  they  are  as  con- 

94 


P  O  E  M  S 

versational  and  as  fluent  as  Stevenson's  letters, 
and  are  diffuse  as  his  prose  rarely  is. 

Better  than  these  are  some  of  the  dryly 
humorous  Scots  dialect  poems,  such  as  The 
Spaewife,  with  its  refrain  of  "  — Ifs  gey  an* 
easy  spierin\  says  the  beggar-wife  to  me." 
These  again  are  often  purely  experimental 
versifications  ;  but  they  are  more  than  the 
casual  rhymings  of  the  pleased  householder, 
and  they  have  more  interest  as  poetry.  Far 
and  away  better  even  than  these,  however, 
because  it  is  the  expression  of  a  personal  and, 
I  think,  a  deep  feeling,  is  that  poem,  included 
in  Songs  of  Travel,  and  quoted  in  The  Master 
of  BattarUrae,  which  is  untitled,  but  which  is 
written  "  To  the  tune  of  Wandering  Willie." 

"  Home  no  more  home  to  me,  whither  must  I  wander  ? 
Hunger  my  driver,  I  go  where  I  must." 

In  this  poem  there  seems  to  be  real  emotion, 
as  I  think  there  is  in  the  dedication  to  Mrs. 
Stevenson  of  Weir  of  Herniiston.  In  other 
poems  there  is  a  grace  and  the  mellifluous  flow 
of  words  which  Stevenson  could  always  com- 
mand ;  but  the  verses  make  a  pattern,  and  a 
pattern  of  only  occasional  significance.  They 
are  thus  robbed  of  any  power  to  move  us 
aesthetically. 

The  two  long  narrative  poems,  The  Ballad 
of  Rahero  and  The  Feast  of  Famine,  are  both 

95 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

well-sustained  by  a  body  of  incident.     They 
have,  in  lieu  of  emotion,  a  certain  vividness  of 
excitement.     One  is  excited  by  what  is  going 
forward,  one  must  read  on  for  the  story.     In 
the  degree,  therefore,  in  which  one's  attention 
is  removed  from  the  versification,  these  two 
narratives  are  good  ;    and  those  other  verses 
based  on  legends — Heather  Ale  and  Ticonderoga 
— would  be  sufficient  to  emphasise  the  fact 
that  Stevenson  loved  a  story  and  was  always 
at  his  best  with  a  tale  to  spin.    When,  however, 
we  reach  poems  in  which  no  story  is  to  be  told, 
we  are  confronted  with  an  absence  of  emotion 
which  robs  the  pages  we  read  of  all  that  exceeds 
mere  pleasurable  line-scanning.     Happy  lines 
there  are,  turns  of  phrase  that  perhaps  have 
given  rise  to  the  poem  into  which  they  are 
woven.    But  they  are  only,  at  best,  the  amiable 
pleasantries    of   one    who    could    handle    with 
dexterity  the  words  of  whose  music  his  mind 
was  full.     "  The  bright  ring  of  words  "  is  not 
the  phrase  of  a  poet ;    it  is  the  phrase  of  a 
connoisseur,  and  of  one  who  used  words  as  a 
connoisseur  uses  them.     The  poet  is  a  singer 
first  :    he  does  not  make  a  poem  out  of  his 
craft.     And  the  tendency  to  diffuseness  which 
mars  many  of  the  longer  lyrics  is  a  curious 
instance  of  failure  in  a  writer  who  regarded 
compression  as  an  essential  of  good  style. 

96 


POEMS 

in 

In  A  Child's  Garden  of  Verses  Stevenson  was 
doing  a  thing  which  had  never  really  been  done 
before.  There  are  nursery  rhymes  which 
crystallise  children's  ideas ;  but  this  book 
actually  shows,  in  what  we  must  believe  to  be 
an  extraordinarily  happy  way,  the  working  of 
a  particular  child  mind  over  a  great  variety  of 
matters.  Its  excellence  is  due  to  the  fact  that 
Stevenson's  young  days,  lonely  as  some  of 
them  had  been,  had  never  lacked  interest,  had 
always  been  full  of  those  simple  and  direct 
pleasures  of  incident  and  encounter  and  memory 
which  happy  children  enjoy.  The  world  had 
been  full  of  a  number  of  things  ;  and  the 
memory  of  those  things  had  abided.  It  was 
the  memory  of  a  fanciful  rather  than  an 
imaginative  childhood,  a  childhood  of  super- 
stitions and  sports,  of  a  buried  tin  soldier 
and  of  the  pleasant  land  of  play  ;  but  we  must 
not  forget  that  such  poems  as  My  Treasures, 
poor  in  some  of  their  lines,  are  finely  imagina- 
tive reconstructions,  the  naivete  of  which 
prevents  many  readers  from  estimating  their 
quality.  So  with  The  Unseen  Playmate,  which, 
although  it  is  a  poem  for  grown-ups,  reveals  an 
understanding  of  a  most  important  fact  in 
children's  games  far  more  profound  than  are 
G  97 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

the  pretentious  and  unconvincing  lines  to 
R.  A.  M.  Stevenson  in  Underwoods.  Even  if 
the  idea  of  The  Unseen  Playmate  may  be  the 
idea  of  a  grown-up  pretending,  the  writing  of 
this,  as  of  the  other  verses,  is  almost  without 
lapse,  charmingly  simple  and  natural.  I  believe 
it  is  a  fact  that  children  appreciate  and  even 
delight  in  A  Child's  Garden  of  Verses,  not 
merely  at  the  bidding  of  their  parents,  but  as 
a  normal  manifestation  of  taste.  This  in  itself 
would  be  a  proof  that  the  book  is  already  a 
secondary  nursery  classic.  For  our  present 
purpose,  if  that  does  not  seem  rather  an  over- 
bearing way  of  valuing  a  book  so  slight  in 
form,  it  is  sufficient  to  say  that  Stevenson's 
success  here  was  due  to  the  fact  that  he  was 
legitimately  using  the  memory  of  actual  ex- 
perience. Too  many  of  his  serious,  or  grown- 
up, poems  show  their  models  ;  too  many  of 
them  flow  undistinguished  by  any  truly  poetic 
quality  ;  too  many  of  them  are  experiments 
|  in  metre  or  rhyme,  such  as  one  may  write  for 
fun,  but  never  for  free  circulation.  The  Child's 
Garden  of  Verses  alone,  then,  of  the  four 
volumes,  exhibits  a  strict  harmony  of  design 
with  performance.  Its  dedication  to  Steven- 
son's nurse,  Alison  Cunningham,  serves  only 
to  make  the  book  more  complete. 


98 


POEMS 


IV 

Implicit  in  the  strictures  upon  Stevenson's 
poetry  which  have  preceded  this  paragraph  is 
the  assumption  that  Milton's  requirements  of 
poetry — that  it  should  be  simple,  sensuous, 
passionate — is  fundamentally  true  as  applied 
to  lyrical  poetry.  It  would  be  troublesome  to 
apply  such  a  test  to  many  of  the  minor  poets  ; 
and  it  may  be  that  a  few  of  Stevenson's  poems 
would  stand  the  test.  Not  many  of  them, 
however,  because  none  of  them  shows  a  depth 
of  emotion  uncommon  to  the  ordinarily  sensi- 
tive person.  Stevenson  was  sensitive  to  many 
things ;  without  sensitiveness  he  could  not 
have  written  A  Child's  Garden  of  Verses  or  that 
very  excellent  ballad  Ticonderoga.  But  sensi- 
tiveness is  only  a  poor  substitute  for  emotion  ; 
and  Stevenson's  emotion  ran  in  the  few  or- 
dinary channels  of  the  normal  Scotsman.  He 
loved  home  ;  he  loved  those  around  him  ;  he 
desired  to  be  loved,  to  be  free  of  the  fear  of 
poverty,  to  live  in  comfort  and  in  health. 
Those  things  he  felt  deeply,  as  Scotsmen,  as 
most  men,  do.  He  loved  truth  ;  but  it  was  a 
conventional  truth ;  a  truth,  that  is  to  say, 
improvised  from  ordinary  usage,  from  hearsay, 
from  the  dogma  of  "that  station  of  life";  a 
truth  such  as  any  man  who  finds  himself  born 

99 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

in  a  little  pit  of  earth  may  harden  his  moral 
shell  and  his  imagination  and  stultify  his 
spiritual  curiosity  by  accepting ;  and  it  was  a 
truth  out  of  which  Stevenson  was  escaping 
towards  the  end  of  his  life.  But  in  all  this 
love  of  virtues  and  duties  and  usages  there  was 
never  until  Stevenson's  emergence  into  the 
greater  freedom  of  life  in  the  South  Seas  the 
passionate  love  of  anything  for  its  own  sake. 
If  he  loved  the  open  air  it  was  with  a  pleasant, 
"  playing  "  love,  a  sort  of  self-indulgence.  Over 
his  heart  he  kept  the  watchful  guard  of  a 
Protestant  Scotsman.  It  was  unmoved,  a 
secret,  not  to  be  known.  It  did  not  inform 
his  work,  in  which  there  is  sometimes  a  heat 
of  composition,  or  even  a  heat  of  feeling,  but 
never  the  cold  heat  of  profound  and  piercing 
emotion.  That  he  was  capable  of  being  easily 
moved,  that  he  loved  virtue  and  hated  cruelty 
and  wrong,  these  things  are  true.  That  he 
could  grow  hot  at  a  calumny,  as  he  did  in  the 
defence  of  Father  Damien,  is  equally  true.  But 
these  things  are  the  signs  of  a  prudent  man, 
eagerly  interested  in  life,  rather  taking  pleasure 
in  the  thought  that  he  is  hot  to  attack  in- 
justice ;  not  of  a  profound  thinker  or  of  a  poet. 
They  warm  us  with,  perhaps,  affection  for 
Stevenson  ;  they  keep  alive  our  admiration 
for  him  as  an  attractive  figure  in  our  literary 

100 


POEMS 


history.  They  do  not  thrill  us,  because  they 
appeal  to  the  interest  and  excitement  and 
honesty  and  feeling  in  us,  and  not  to  those 
more  secret,  more  passionate  reserves  which 
we  yield  only  to  the  poet. 


101 


VI 
PLAYS 

i 
It  is  a  commonplace  of  dramatic  reporting, 
which  in  spite  of  its  frequently  doubtful  ap- 
plication has  the  truth  of  an  old  saw,  that 
the  novelist  cannot  write  plays.  Certainly,  it 
would  seem  that  the  qualities  which  go  to 
the  making  of  good  plays  are  not  precisely 
those  which  make  good  novels  ;  for  while  it  is 
possible  to  conceive  a  novel  in  terms  of  narra- 
tive, descriptions  of  abounding  nature,  psycho- 
logical analysis,  and  tableaux,  the  play  has 
rules  more  strictly  objective  and  more  definitely 
rigid.  Now  if  we,  for  the  moment,  pass  over 
the  question  of  Stevenson's  collaborator  in 
the  four  printed  plays  with  which  his  name 
is  associated,  and  if  we,  for  this  occasion, 
treat  them  as  though  they  were  his  work 
entirely,  we  shall  be  better  able  to  distinguish 
certain  remarkable  characteristics  of  these 
plays,  and,  anticipating  certain  general  con- 
clusions to  be  made  later,  of  Stevenson's  talent. 

102 


PLAYS 

Stevenson,  we  are  all  aware,  was  never, 
strictly  speaking,  in  spite  of  Catriona  and 
Weir  of  Hermiston,  a  novelist.  He  was  a 
writer  of  many  kinds  of  stories  ;  but  they 
were  not  primarily,  until  we  come  to  Weir, 
domestic  or  psychological.  Many  of  them  were 
what  no  doubt  would  commonly  be  called 
"  dramatic,"  in  the  sense  that  they  contained 
scenes  of  some  violence  ;  but  for  the  most  part 
they  were  narrative  interspersed  with  tableaux. 
They  were  "  picturesque,"  not  because  they 
were  startlingly  visual,  but  because  Stevenson 
had  that  flair  for  the  odd,  the  startling,  or  the 
vivid  effect  of  contrast  which  is  generally 
described  by  the  word  "  picturesque."  It  was 
the  oddness  of  Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde  that 
allured  him  before  he  became  oppressed  by 
its  symbolism.  It  was,  equally,  oddness  that 
always  attracted  him  in  character  :  he  had  no 
profound  sense  of  character,  for  this  reason. 
Passivity  he  never  understood.  His  characters 
must  forever  be  in  action.  That,  it  might  be 
supposed,  was  in  itself  a  first  reason  for  turning 
to  the  theatre,  since,  according  to  modern 
dramatic  reporters,  "  drama "  is  a  word 
synonymous  with  the  word  "  action."  Action, 
something  doing — that,  by  the  recipe,  is  the 
certain  play.  But  while  action  may  give  a 
play  breathless  suspense,  while  it  may  provide 

103 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

the  kind  of  play  which,  in  a  specifically 
theatrical  sense,  is  called  a  "  drama,"  action 
is  not  the  whole  battle.  To  action,  or  at 
least  to  the  psychological  excitement  created 
by  a  sense  of  action  in  progress  and  a  climax 
pending,  must  be  added  a  very  powerful  sense 
of  what  is  effective  in  the  theatre.  A  pause,  a 
sound,  verbal  repetition,  an  abrupt  change — 
these  things  are  crude  examples,  chosen  at 
random  from  among  the  obvious  instances  of 
what  contributes  to  the  sense  of  the  theatre. 
If  we  think  of  such  things  as  the  tapping  of 
Pew's  stick  (in  Admiral  Guinea),  and,  in 
Deacon  Brodie,  the  appearance  of  the  masked 
Deacon  at  the  window  by  which  Leslie  is 
watching  for  him,  we  shall  realise  that  in  some 
degree,  in  some  very  obvious  and  primitive 
form,  Stevenson  was  possessed  of  this  attribute. 
But  one  thing  we  shall  infallibly  discover  him 
to  lack,  a  thing  which  Mr.  Henry  James 
missed  in  Catriona,  a  thing  which  has  vital 
importance  in  drama — the  visual  sense.  These 
plays  show  no  real  power  of  visualising  a 
scene.  Picturesque  they  all  are ;  they  all 
have  qualities  which  make  them  engrossing — 
as  reading.  But  they  are  not  focussed  for  the 
eyes,  and  they  are  not  well  constructed  for 
real  dramatic  effect. 

Deacon    Brodie    is    in    five    acts    and    eight 
104 


PLAYS 

tableaux,  and  its  effects  are  indescribably 
broken,  so  that  irrelevancies  are  numerous, 
distracting  side-issues  over-emphasised,  and 
so  that  the  Deacon  is  almost  a  minor  character. 
It  is  hard  to  realise  that  there  are  only  a  dozen 
persons  in  the  play,  for  their  comings  and 
goings  are  so  frequent  as  to  give  the  effect  of 
a  confused  number  of  straggling  participants 
in  desultory  action.  The  play  itself  centres 
round  an  historical  figure — Deacon  Brodie — 
who  was  an  honest  man  before  the  world  by 
day,  and  by  night  an  expert  cracksman.  His 
name  is  familiar  both  in  criminal  history  and 
in  the  annals  of  Edinburgh,  where  his  activities 
became,  after  his  death,  notorious.  In  the 
play,  Brodie  at  last  is  eager  for  reform  ;  but 
one  of  his  cronies,  tempted  by  a  Bow  Street 
runner,  and  the  only  one  of  Brodie's  friends 
to  yield  to  temptation,  betrays  him.  Though 
Brodie  escapes,  his  absence  from  home  has 
been  discovered  in  the  excitement  consequent 
upon  his  father's  death,  and,  when  arrest  is 
imminent,  he  takes  his  own  life.  Stevenson 
had  found  the  details  of  Brodie's  life  while  he 
was  preparing  the  sketches  collected  under 
the  title  Edinburgh :  Picturesque  Notes  ;  and 
it  is  conceivable  that  in  some  measure  the 
play's  technique  was  a  little  influenced  by  a 
reading   of   some  eighteenth -century  episodic 

105 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

plays,  such,  for  example,  as  Gay's  "  Beggar's 
Opera,"  which  is  similarly  broken  in  construc- 
tion, though  more  permissibly  so,  because  "  The 
Beggar's  Opera  "  is  no  more  than  a  skein  in 
which  ballads  and  satire  may  be  found  to  pro- 
vide our  entertainment.  This  mention  of 
"The  Beggar's  Opera"  must  not  be  taken 
too  seriously,  however,  because  although  that 
play  deals  with  the  life  of  highwaymen  and 
pickpurses  and  thief-takers  in  the  eighteenth 
century,  as  Deacon  Brodie  does,  it  is  pro- 
foundly real,  whereas  Deacon  Brodie  is  only  too 
obviously  modern  fake.  Macheath  and  Polly 
Peachum  are  infinitely  more  real  than  Brodie 
and  his  doxy.  Moreover  the  ensemble  in 
Deacon  Brodie  is  on  the  whole  poorly  conceived. 
The  minor  persons  are  mere  figures,  introduced 
to  stand  here  or  there,  or  do  this  or  that,  and 
are  labelled  with  names  and  idiosyncrasies. 
The  major  persons,  though  more  detailed,  have 
an  equal  lack  of  vitality.  It  is  necessary  to  add 
the  further  explanation  that  Deacon  Brodie 
is  the  first  of  the  plays,  and  that  it  dates  from 
1880.  It  is  easily  the  least  coherent  of  them 
all.  Stevenson  was  to  improve  upon  Deacon 
Brodie  in  that  respect,  at  least. 


106 


PLAYS 

ii 

The  two  lightest  plays — Beau  Austin  and 
Macaire — are  experiments,  the  one  in  manner, 
the  other  in  bizarre  or,  as  it  is  styled  by  the 
authors,  "  melodramatic  farce."  The  manner 
of  Beau  Austin  is  the  manner  of  the  costume 
play.  It  is  highly  sophisticated,  and  its  key- 
note is  powder  and  patches.  The  beau  is  at  his 
toilet,  and  one  of  the  women  he  has  betrayed 
is  in  the  town,  still  sick  with  despair  at  her 
soiled  virtue.  Her  true  love  hears  from  the 
lady's  lips  the  story  of  her  betrayal,  and,  on 
being  forbidden  to  challenge  the  beau,  con- 
tents himself  with  demanding  a  marriage 
ceremony.  His  flatteries  are  effective,  the 
beau  consents,  and  the  formal  proposal  is 
made,  only  to  be  rejected  by  the  lady,  whose 
hauteur  is  aroused.  So  matters  stand  when 
the  lady's  brother,  learning  by  chance  of  the 
betrayal,  insults  the  beau  before  an  important 
personage.  As  climax,  the  beau  proposes 
publicly,  and  is  as  publicly  accepted.  It  will 
be  seen  that  the  play  could  not  claim,  except- 
ing in  respect  of  verbal  artifice,  to  be  more 
than  a  pretty  jig-saw.  It  could  have  no  effect 
of  reality  :  the  effect  desired  by  the  authors 
was  one  purely  of  the  stage.  Verbally  it  is 
exquisitely   dexterous.     That   is  its  undoing. 

107 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

The  attempt  is  made  to  convey  in  words 
something  more  than  the  action  of  the  piece 
would  successfully  carry  :  words  are  to  create 
an  atmosphere  of  the  eighteenth  century 
fashionable  life,  to  indicate  the  possibility  that 
calm  picturesque  heartless  exteriors  shielded 
even  then  hearts  that  beat  warmly  beneath 
lace  and  brocade.  The  play  was  a  pretence 
that  nothing  was  something,  a  pretty  moving 
picture  under  the  perception  of  which,  beating 
out  in  pianissimo  airs  from  appropriate  music, 
and  the  faint  throb  of  an  unseen  minuet,  was 
the  delicate  heart  of  the  period.  It  was  an 
aesthetic  view  of  the  eighteenth  century,  the 
century  of  Fielding  and  of  Smollett,  tinkered 
about  to  make  a  perpetual  bal  masque,  or,  shall 
we  say,  a  picture  by  Watteau  or  Fragonard. 
In  point  of  fact  the  play  is  too  slight  to  bear 
its  weight  of  intention  :  it  remains  verbal. 
As  drama  it  is  more  negligible  than  "  Monsieur 
Beaucaire  "  or  "  The  Adventure  of  Lady 
Ursula,"  because  its  literary  pretensions  are 
so  much  more  elaborate.  It  has  sometimes  fine 
shades  of  close  verbal  fence  that  are  Meredithian : 
it  is  better  to  read  than  it  could  be  to  see.  But 
it  is  an  attempt,  one  might  say  an  almost  basely 
cunning  attempt,  to  capture  the  theatre  as  a 
place  where  costumes  grace  a  barren  play. 
It  failed  because  its  authors  were  two  con- 

108 


PLAYS 

scientious  literary  men,  bent  upon  a  super- 
ficial perfection  undreamed  of  by  practical 
dramatists.  Just  as  Cowper,  in  translating 
Homer,  made  an  epic  for  a  tea-party,  so 
Henley  and  Stevenson  made  about  the  rational 
and  cynical  eighteenth  century  a  sophisticated 
play  for  a  boudoir.  They  concentrated  upon 
the  superficial,  and  only  said,  but  did  not 
show,  that  the  men  and  women  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century  had  hearts  as  true  and  passion- 
ate as  those  of  our  day.  The  play  lacked  real- 
ism, and,  more  disastrously,  it  lacked  reality. 

On  the  other  hand,  Macaire  has  a  thin  air 
of  jocularity  which  almost  carries  it  through. 
It  has  a  sententious  cleric,  a  drunken  notary, 
a  repetitious  father  for  the  bride,  a  courteous 
host,  a  little  mystery  of  the  bridegroom's 
nurseling  days,  the  facetious  Macaire  and  his 
companion.  It  has  all  these  things,  and  it 
has  an  idea,  strong  enough  for  a  single  act, 
stretched  to  its  thinnest  over  several  acts 
which  demand  cuts  more  severe  than  the 
authors  allow. 

Macaire  escaping  from  justice,  threatened 
each  moment,  in  the  face  of  the  audience, 
with  instant  arrest,  carries  himself  with  un- 
failing sang-froid  through  all  his  difficulties 
but  the  last.  Finding  a  chance  of  sport,  and 
possibly  of  profit,  he  impersonates  an  erring 

109 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

father.  The  real  father  appears.  Macaire 
still,  after  the  manner  of  Mr.  Jingle,  is  im- 
perturbable. Competition  follows,  until  the 
desire  for  the  genuine  father's  money  becomes 
too  strong  for  Macaire.  Then  only  does  he 
show  the  blackness  of  his  heart,  which  does 
not  shrink,  in  such  desperate  situations,  from 
murder.  So  Macaire,  still  talking,  still  watchful 
and  unscrupulous,  is  brought  to  bay.  Fiercely 
turning,  in  a  picturesque  situation,  upon  the 
stairs,  he  is  shot  by  a  gendarme  on  the  stage. 
That  is  a  skeleton  of  the  play  ;  but  the  play  is 
again  a  literary  play,  so  that  sensationalism 
will  not  redeem  it.  By  repetitions  of  catch- 
phrases  and  by  trivial  incidents  which  (e.g. 
the  exchanging  of  the  wine-bottles)  are  not 
unknown  to  the  humbler  kinds  of  drama,  the 
story  is  continued  until  its  idle  joking  can  no 
longer  be  suddenly  stirred  into  flaming  melo- 
drama by  the  noise  and  zest  of  bloody  crime. 
It  has  many  shrewd  bids  for  theatrical  effective- 
ness ;  but  it  faints  for  want  of  a  fabric  upon 
which  its  devices  might  flourish  and  triumph- 
antly justify  themselves. 

in 
The  fourth  play,  Admiral  Guinea,  has  fine 
qualities,  both  literary  and  dramatic  ;    it  is  the 
least  literary  and  the  most  dramatically  effec- 

110 


PLAYS 

tive  of  all  the  plays.  It  contains  one  figure,  in 
Pew,  which  might  have  been,  as  far  as  one  may 
judge  in  reading,  a  haunt ingly  gruesome  object ; 
and,  in  spite  of  Stevenson's  own  subsequent  con- 
tempt for  this  play  and  for  Macaire,  shows  a 
greater,  if  conventional,  power  of  simplifica- 
tion than  does  any  of  the  other  plays.  Admiral 
Guinea,  a  retired  and  penitent  slaver,  refuses 
his  daughter  her  lover,  on  the  ground  that  the 
lover  is  ungodly.  Pew,  an  old  associate  of 
Admiral  Guinea,  become  blind  for  his  sins,  and 
still  full  of  vengeful  wickedness,  arrives  in  the 
neighbourhood,  catches  the  lover  drunk,  leads 
him  back  to  Admiral  Guinea's  cottage,  and 
tries,  with  his  aid,  to  rob  his  old  captain  of 
certain  riches  which  he  supposes  to  lie  in  a 
brass-bound  chest.  The  young  man's  reaction, 
their  discovery  by  Admiral  Guinea,  the  violent 
death  of  the  unrepentant  Pew  follow;  where- 
upon the  lovers  are  suitably  blessed  by  Admiral 
Guinea. 

It  has  been  said,  above,  that  this  play  shows 
a  greater  power  of  simplification  than  the 
others  ;  the  action  of  it  is  certainly  quicker, 
more  obvious,  less  choked  with  verbal  ex- 
pressiveness, than  is  the  action  of  the  other 
plays  ;  and  in  so  far  as  this  is  so  it  would 
appear  that  Admiral  Guinea  is  a  considerable 
advance,  technically,  upon  them. 

Ill 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

The  simplification  is,  to  some  considerable 
extent,  effected  by  a  strange  poverty  of  in- 
vention, and  the  play  is  likest  of  all  to  those 
nondescripts  which  Stevenson  as  a  little  boy 
must  have  performed  upon  his  toy  stage,  with 
paper  figures  pushed  hither  and  thither  in 
tin  slides  upon  the  boards.  In  spite  of  that, 
Admiral  Guinea  is  the  best  of  the  plays  because, 
in  a  higher  degree  than  its  fellows,  it  is  truly 
actable.  We  cannot  regard  the  confused 
cramped  episodic  Deacon  Brodie  as  theatrically 
effective.  Equally  it  is  impossible,  from  the 
standpoint  of  public  performance,  to  consider 
as  satisfactory  either  Beau  Austin  or  Macaire. 
Admiral  Guinea,  however,  even  if  it  belongs 
to  a  class  of  play  which  is  associated  in  our 
minds  with  such  titles  as  "  Black-Eyed  Susan," 
has  its  action  very  largely  comprised  in  the 
material  put  upon  the  stage  ;  it  has  the  obvious 
stage  effects  of  darkness  and  the  dreadful 
tapping  stick  of  Pew  ;  and  it  has  picturesque 
struggles,  death,  wounded  and  reasserted  honour, 
and,  for  these  plays,  a  minimum  of  soliloquy. 
More  it  would  be  impossible  to  claim  for 
Admiral  Guinea  without  seeing  it  performed  : 
again  we  have  types  roughly  "  mannered  "  to 
serve  as  persons  of  the  play  :  but  they  are 
types  clearly  in  accordance  with  tradition,  and 
they  preserve  their  interest  fully  until  they  are 

112 


PLAYS 

done  with  and  put  away  with  the  footlight- 
wicks,  and  the  tin  slides,  and  the  other  para- 
phernalia of  the  toy  stage — paper  figures,  a 
penny  plain,  and  twopence  coloured. 


IV 

For  that  brings  us  to  the  pathetic  final 
explanation  of  the  failure  of  the  Henley- 
Stevenson  plays.  We  may  say  that  they  are 
deficient  in  drama,  or  that  they  are  trivial  in 
theme,  or  that  they  have  no  visual  sense  to 
illumine  them  for  our  eyes  ;  but  the  truth  is 
that  they  fail  because  they  are  false.  The 
theatre  has  in  it  much  that  is  false,  much  to 
which  we  deliberately  shut  our  eyes  in  order 
that  we  may  accept  the  dramatist's  formal 
conventions.  We  do  not,  in  the  theatre, 
demand  that  "  King  Lear  "  shall  be  accom- 
panied by  a  pandemonium  of  crackling  tin 
and  iron  and  artificial  whoopings  of  wind. 
Those  things  we  prefer  to  imagine  for  our- 
selves. But  somehow  the  mixture  of  legitimate 
convention  and  the  basest  imitation  of  reality 
has  been  confused  in  the  theatre.  The  exaggera- 
tion regarded  as  necessary  by  an  effete  system 
of  acting  and  production  has  created  other 
unpardonable  falsenesses.  The  stage  has  been 
a  place  upon  which  actors  disported  them- 
H  113 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

selves.    It  was  of  such  a  stage  that  Stevenson 
thought.     In  each  case  he  hung  a  play  upon  a 
sensational  figure — Brodie,  Macaire,  Pew,  and, 
in  a  much  lesser  degree,  upon  the  picturesque 
figure   of   Beau   Austin.     To   him   the   drama 
was  nothing  but   play.     It  was  an  excuse — 
nay,  a  demand,  for  unreality.     He  supposed 
that   stage   characters   really   were   cardboard 
figures    such    as    he    had    known,    moralising 
ranters,  virtuous  girls,  spouters  of  Latin  tags, 
pious    brands    from    the    burning,    handsome 
courageous  puppet-like  juvenile  leads,  and  so 
on.     It  never  occurred  to  him  to  put  a  real 
figure  in  a  play  :    he  never  supposed  that  a 
character  in  a  play  had  any  end  but  to  be  put 
back  in  the  box  with  the  other  playthings. 
That  is  really  the  cause  of  the  shallowness  of 
these  four  plays.     As  Stevenson  admitted  to 
Mr.   Henry  James,   he  heard  people  talking, 
and  felt  them  acting,  and  that  seemed  to  him 
to  be  fiction.     But  to  hear  people  talking  and 
to  feel  them  acting  bespeaks  a  very  unmaterial 
conception  of  them  :    if  a  character  in  a  play 
talks,    however    monotonously,    without    de- 
veloping any  personality  save  that  of  verbal 
mannerism,  we  are  bound  to  feel  that  he  has 
not   been   realised.      And   just    as   Stevenson 
realised  none  of  the  characters  in  his  plays,  so 
we   are   powerless  to  realise  them.     We   find 

in 


PLAYS 

them,  as  Professor  Saintsbury  pathetically 
found  Catriona  herself,  bloodless.  Professor 
Saintsbury  found  Catriona  full  of  sawdust, 
while  of  the  characters  in  the  plays  we  have 
used  the  word  "  paper  "  :  very  well,  the  im- 
pression of  lifelessness  is  as  clearly  felt  in  each 
case.  And  such  an  impression,  carried  to  its 
logical  end,  explains  why,  in  at  least  one  de- 
partment of  letters,  Stevenson  from  the  first 
mistook  his  ground.  Not  one  of  the  four  plays 
has  serious  value  as  an  example  of  dramatic 
art;  it  is  clear  that  not  one  of  them  so  far 
has  commended  itself  to  the  public  or  to  the 
actor-managers.  Yet  the  plays  were  obviously 
set  to  catch  the  popular  taste,  and  their 
literary  finish,  a  confession  in  itself  of  an 
absence  of  dramatic  impulse,  does  not  succeed 
in  commending  them  to  those  who  judge  by 
more  exacting  standards. 


115 


VII 
SHORT    STORIES 

i 

Stevenson  himself  establishes  the  fact  that 
he  found  short-story  writing  easier  than  the 
writing  of  novels.  "  It  is  the  length  that  kills," 
he  confessed.  But  length  offered  difficulties  in 
the  longer  stories  because  Stevenson,  besides 
lacking  the  physical  endurance  for  continuous 
imaginative  effort,  had  the  experimental  and 
inventive  mind  rather  than  the  synthetic 
or  the  analytical.  It  was  easier  for  him  to  see 
the  whole  of  a  short  story.  It  could  be  com- 
pressed :  it  had  not  to  be  sustained.  And  in 
the  writing  of  a  short  story  his  confidence 
never  slackened.  He  was  then  not  sailing  in 
uncharted  seas.  It  is  for  this  reason,  in  the 
first  place,  that  Stevenson's  short  stories  are 
better  as  works  of  art  than  his  long  ones.  A 
little  idea,  a  flash,  it  may  be,  of  inspiration  ; 
and  Stevenson  had  his  story  complete,  ready  for 
that  scrupulous  handling  and  manipulation 
which  the  actual  composition  always  involved. 

116 


SHORT     STORIES 

He  did  not  greatly  deal  in  anecdote ;  his 
psychological  studies  are  inclined  to  be  hollow ; 
but  he  was  perfectly  effective  in  his  not  very 
powerful  vein  of  fantasy,  could  tell  a  fairy  tale 
with  distinction,  succeeded  once  without  ques- 
tion in  picturesque  drama,  and,  when  he  fell 
to  anecdote,  as  in  The  Treasure  of  Franchard, 
Providence  and  the  Guitar,  and  The  Beach  of 
Falesd,  he  was  pleasantly  triumphant.  More- 
over, in  two  of  his  "  bogle  "  stories,  the  one 
inserted  in  Catriona,  and  the  other  famous  to 
all  the  world  as  Thrawn  Janet,  he  seems  to  me 
to  have  risen  clearly  above  anecdote  with 
matter  which  might  have  been  left  as  unsatis- 
factory as  it  remains  in  The  Body-Snatcher. 

In  one  of  his  reviews  Stevenson  speaks  of 
"  that  compression  which  is  the  mark  of  a 
really  sovereign  style."  Compression  is  no 
more  the  mark  of  a  sovereign  style,  of  course, 
than  it  is  of  a  suit  of  clothes.  Compression 
brings  with  it  obscurity,  and  is  a  mark  of  self- 
consciousness.  What  Stevenson  meant  was 
possibly  a  justification  of  apophthegm  and 
figure.  He  rather  enjoyed  what  somebody  once 
called  "  minting  the  arresting  phrase."  There 
is,  at  any  rate,  a  palpable  connection  between 
our  two  quotations.  But  it  is  certain  that 
precision,  austerity,  or,  if  I  may  use  the  word, 
chastity,  of  expression  is  a  sign  of  good  style  ; 

117 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

and  compression,  where  it  takes  the  form  of 
heightening  and  intensification  of  effect,  is  the 
mark  of  a  good  short  story.  It  is  the  mark  of 
Stevenson's  best  stories.  It  is  the  mark  of 
Thrown  Janet,  of  The  Pavilion  on  the  Links,  of 
The  Bottle  Imp.  Sometimes,  after  promising 
well,  Stevenson  abandons  himself,  it  is  true,  to 
his  natural  Scottish  aptitude,  and  literally 
"  talks  out "  such  tales  as  Markheim  and 
A  Lodging  for  the  Night ;  but,  quite  as  often,  his 
judgment  beats  his  inclination,  and  the  result  is 
a  classic  short  story  in  a  language  not  too 
brilliantly  equipped  with  examples  of  the  craft. 
For  the  short  story  is  above  all  a  matter  of 
justesse,  by  which  word  I  mean  to  suggest 
delicate  propriety  of  expression  to  idea.  Mr. 
Henry  James  can  tell  a  short  story,  because 
Mr.  Henry  James  writes,  as  it  were,  with  a  very 
fine  pen.  Stevenson  was  not  comparable  as  an 
artist  with  Mr.  Henry  James  ;  but  he  wrote  in 
a  less  rarified  atmosphere  ;  and  it  is  still 
practically  an  unsettled  question  whether  a  dis- 
tinguished artist  (one  who  perfectly  expresses  a 
fine  conception),  such  as  Turgenev  or  Mr.  Henry 
James,  is  the  superior  or  the  inferior  of  the 
writer  with  more  tumultuous  sympathies  whose 
sense  of  form  is  less  than  his  sense  of  life. 
So  that  when  Stevenson  wrote  The  Pavilion  on 
the  Links,  or  The  Bottle  Imp,  or  Thrawn  Janet, 

118 


SHORT     STORIES 

or  Markheim,  he  was  writing  particular  stories 
of  which  only  the  last,  one  supposes,  could  ever 
have  occurred  to  Mr.  James  as  a  subject  for  a 
short  story  at  all.  Conversely,  one  sees 
Stevenson  blundering  into  the  bluntnesses  and 
certainly  the  ultimate  failure  of  Olalla,  with 
the  knowledge  that  his  delicacy  of  style  was 
more  marked  than  the  poignancy  of  his  percep- 
tion ;  and  the  psychological  explorations  of 
Olalla  are  jejune  stumblings  compared  with  the 
finished  delicacy  of  "  Washington  Square." 
One  does  not  think,  in  reading,  of  Mr.  James  ; 
but  one  may  perhaps  be  permitted  to  illustrate 
a  point  by  a  reference  to  his  work,  which  has  no 
precise  significance  as  a  parallel.  That  fact,  I 
hope,  will  excuse  a  momentary  comparison  for 
the  purpose  of  showing  that  Will  o'  the  Mill, 
for  all  its  stylistic  accomplishment,  is  a  barren 
piece  of  moralising.  Where  Stevenson  essayed 
profundity,  as  all  writers  are  drawn  to  essay 
profundity,  whether  it  is  from  natural  pro- 
foundness or  from  the  instinct  of  imitation,  he 
was  badly  hampered  by  his  inexperience  as  an 
inductive  philosopher.  Both  Will  o'  the  Mill 
and  Markheim  are,  as  it  were,  appendages  to 
that  doleful  failure  Prince  Otto.  They  were 
experiments  for  Stevenson  in  a  particular 
genre  for  which  talent  and  his  mental  training 
had  lent  him  no  aptitude.     It  was  on  other 

119 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

work  that  he  more  successfully  took  his  stand 
as  a  writer  of  short  stories.  His  success — 
considering  that  we  are  now  examining  his 
position  among  the  masters  of  our  literature — 
can  only  be  attested  where  his  work  stands 
supreme  or,  at  any  rate,  is  clearly  distinguished, 
in  its  own  class.  It  cannot  be  doubted  for  one 
moment  that  Stevenson  wrote  some  exceed- 
ingly fine  short  stories,  fit  to  be  compared,  in 
their  own  line,  with  any  that  have  been  written 
in  English.  What  follows  must  be  read  in  the 
light  of  this  claim.  In  their  own  way,  I  regard 
The  Suicide  Club,  The  Pavilion  on  the  Links, 
Providence  and  the  Guitar,  Thrown  Janet,  The 
Treasure  of  Franchard,  The  Beach  of  Falesd,  and 
The  Bottle  Imp  as  first-class  short  stories.  In 
a  distinct  second  class  I  should  place  The 
Rajah's  Diamond,  some  of  The  Dynamiter 
stories,  The  Merry  Men,  Will  o'  the  Mill,  Mark- 
heim,  Olalla,  The  Isle  of  Voices,  and  Dr.  Jekyll 
and  Mr.  Hyde.  The  least  successful  short 
stories  seem  to  me  to  be  The  Story  of  a  Lie,  A 
Lodging  for  the  Night,  The  Sire  de  MalctroiVs 
Door,  The  Misadventures  of  John  Nicholson,  and 
The  Body-Snatcher.  I  am  aware  that  one  at 
least  of  the  stories  which  I  have  placed  in  this 
third  division — The  Sire  de  MaletroiVs  Door — 
has  given  great  pleasure  to  many  readers,  and 
has  even  been  not  without  its  direct  influence 

120 


SHORT     STORIES 

upon  Stevenson's  imitators,  while  another — 
A  Lodging  for  the  Night — is  greatly  admired, 
and  has  been  very  highly  praised  ;  so  that  it 
seems  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  the  classifi- 
cation is  roughly  made,  and  that  it  is  only  here 
attempted  for  reasons  of  convenience.  The 
stories  will  hereafter  be  grouped  according  to 
subject  or  treatment,  and  will  be  examined 
individually.  Those  in  the  first  division  are,  I 
think,  completely  successful  in  their  own  con- 
ventions ;  those  in  the  second  division  are 
either  incompletely  successful  or  successful  in 
conventions  which  seem  to  me  inferior  in 
artistic  value  ;  those  in  the  third  division  are, 
as  far  as  I  can  see,  unsuccessful  either  because 
they  fail  to  impose  their  conventions  upon  the 
reader  or  because  they  fail  to  convince  the 
reader  that  Stevenson  had  mastered  the  craft 
of  short-story  writing.  But,  upon  the  whole, 
I  believe  Stevenson's  short  stories  to  represent 
more  successfully  than  any  other  part  of  his 
output  the  variety  and  the  brilliance  of  his 
talent.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  I  shall  en- 
deavour in  some  detail  to  justify  the  divisions 
indicated  above,  and  to  emphasise  the  fact  that 
such  tentative  distinctions,  even  if  they  prove 
inaccurate  in  the  case  of  some  one  or  two 
stories,  may  yet  have  some  value  as  providing 
a  basis  for  agreement  or  disagreement. 

121 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 


ii 
For  that  reason  I  shall  add  that  the  stories  in 
the  third  division  seem  to  me  to  fail  for  these 
reasons.  The  Story  of  a  Lie  is  obviously 
prentice  work.  It  is  presumably  based  upon 
some  experience  of  his  own  in  France  ;  but  the 
action,  once  transferred  from  the  Continent,  is 
filled  with  sentimentality.  Although  written, 
apparently,  much  later  than  The  Story  of  a  Lie, 
The  Misadventures  of  John  Nicholson  is  a  pro- 
tracted anecdote  which  does  not  awaken  very 
much  interest  by  its  attempt  to  blend  humorous 
exaggeration  with  bizarre  incidents.  The  Bocly- 
Snatcher  is  one  which  Stevenson  had  to  supply 
in  order  to  satisfy  a  journal  with  which  he  had 
made  a  contract.  It  is  meant  to  shock  us,  but 
it  loses  power  before  the  climax,  which  there- 
upon fails  to  shock.  The  idea  is  horrible,  and 
affords  scope  for  much  dreadful  detail  :  Steven- 
son, however,  perhaps  through  ill-health,  was 
unsuccessful  with  it,  and  possibly  the  ugliness  of 
the  whole  thing  is  at  fault.  For  The  Sire  de 
MalctroiVs  Door  I  must  confess  to  the  greatest 
distaste.  It  seems  to  me  to  have  neither 
historical  nor  human  convincingness  ;  and  the 
phrase  at  the  end  of  the  story,  "  her  falling 
body "  very  significantly  conveys  the  pin- 
cushion   substance    of   the    demoiselle    whose 

122 


SHORT     STORIES 

indiscretion  gives  rise  to  the  sickly  and  cloying 
tale.  The  last  story  in  this  division  is  one  that 
enjoys  great  reputation,  first  because  it  deals 
with  Villon,  second  because  there  is  an  outburst 
of  Villon's  against  the  red  hair  of  a  murdered 
man,  and  last  because  there  is  an  elaborately 
written  but  entirely  inconclusive  duologue  be- 
tween Villon  and  his  host.  The  story  seems  to 
me  to  be  without  point  or  form. 

I  believe  that  popular  admiration  for  A 
Lodging  for  the  Night  is  largely  founded  upon 
tradition  or  imitation,  like  the  popular  admira- 
tion for  Shakespeare,  without  the  basis  of  fact 
upon  which  the  popular  admiration  for  Shake- 
speare rests.  It  is  well  known  that  popular 
appreciation  of  great  things  is  shallow,  and  that 
it  rises  from  a  common  attempt  to  emulate 
the  enthusiasm  of  the  apostles  of  Art.  Un- 
fortunately, popular  appreciation  is  more  easily 
aroused  by  artifice  than  by  art.  Accordingly, 
those  who  have  been  taught  to  cite  "  Put  out  the 
light,  and  then— Put  out  the  light "  as  a  profund- 
ity are  ready  to  cite  with  equal  conviction  the 
saying  of  Villon  in  this  story  that  the  murdered 
man  had  no  right  to  have  red  hair.  It  is  one  of 
those  dreadful  aesthetic  blunders  that  quickly 
pass  into  unquestionable  dogma.  If  no  protest  is 
made,  if  those  who  detect  an  imposture  remain 
supine,  the  false  continues  to  masquerade  as 

123 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

the  magnificent ;  and  common  opinions  are  so 
impervious  to  proclaimed  fact  that  it  is  at 
length  impossible  to  cope  with  them,  save  by 
some  such  wearisome  exposition  as  this.  It 
should  be  remembered  that  common  apprecia- 
tion of  art  is  not  guided  by  principles  but  by 
intuitions  and  imitations.  The  decay  of  a  thing 
once  widely  popular  is  slow  ;  and  it  is  due,  not 
to  any  native  perception  of  mistake,  but  to  the 
sluggard  realisation  that  the  old  enthusiasm  is 
less  ardently  canvassed  than  it  was.  A  Lodging 
for  the  Night  has  enjoyed  great  repute,  because 
Stevenson  "  found  "  Villon  at  a  time  when 
other  young  men  were  finding  Villon  ;  and  now 
that  Villon  is  quite  settled  among  the  young 
men,  Stevenson's  essay  on  Villon  and  his  story 
about  Villon  have  reached  the  larger  public 
that  is  always  some  years  after  the  fleeting 
fashion.  The  result  is  that,  by  imitation  of 
those  who  ought  to  have  known  better,  and 
even  by  its  muddled  acceptance  of  a  bad  play 
about  Villon  (called  "  If  I  were  King  "),  the 
public  has  been  led  to  esteem  A  Lodging  for  the 
Night  as  something  more  than  the  piece  of 
laboured  artifice  that  it  always  was. 

In  the  second  class  I  believe  that  The  Rajah's 
Diamond,  The  Dynamiter,  and  Dr.  Jekyll  and 
Mr.  Hyde  are  very  efficient  pieces  of  craftsman- 
ship,   strong   enough   in   invention   to   delight 

124 


SHORT     STORIES 

that  typical  person  called  by  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells 
the  "  weary  giant,"  engrossing  reading  to  the 
accompaniment  of  cigars  and  whisky-and-soda, 
but  not,   in  the  way  of  art,   quite  what  we 
require   from   works   of  creative   imagination. 
The  Merry  Men,   with  one  striking  piece  of 
characterisation,    has   vigour,    but   poor   form 
and    several   superfluities   of  invention.      The 
Isle  of  Voices  is  a  pleasant  enough  fairy-tale, 
but    clearly    inferior   to    its    companion    piece 
The  Bottle  Imp.    The  other  three  tales,  Will  o9 
the  Mill,  Markheim,  and  Olalla  are  all  psycho- 
logical studies  of  a  kind  that  is  nowadays  called 
arid.    That  is  to  say,  they  have  greater  elabor- 
ateness of  treatment  than  their  intrinsic  im- 
portance quite  justifies.      Will  o'   the  Mill  is 
written  with  great  softness  and  delicacy,  in  a 
sort  of  slow  and  lulling  drone  very  sweet  to  the 
ear  ;    Markheim  has  great  virtuosity,  is  faint 
and  exquisite  in  manner,  feeble  in  perception, 
and  is  sometimes,  I  believe,  false  in  psychology. 
Its  plan  and  its  manner  would  only  be  finally 
true  if  its  understanding  pierced  more  sharply 
and    finely    to   the  heart  of  truth.     It  lacks 
penetration.     Olalla  is,  in  many  ways,  fine,  in 
some,  beautiful.    It  is,  however,  as  Stevenson 
came  to  be  aware,  false.    It  is  false,  not  because 
it  is  insincere,  but  because  Stevenson's  know- 
ledge had  not  the  temper  and  the  needle-like 

125 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

capacity  to  go  ever  deeper  into  the  subtleties 
upon  which  he  was  engaged.  I  suspect  that  he 
dared  not  trust  his  imagination,  that  his 
imagination  had  more  ingenuity  than  courage 
or  strength.  The  story  does  not  produce 
aesthetic  emotion  :  it  is  as  though  the  author 
had  made  a  fine  net  to  trap  a  moonbeam,  as 
though,  when  he  thought  to  have  come  at  the 
heart  of  the  matter,  it  had  escaped  him.  He 
was  perhaps  not  wise  enough  in  the  mysteries 
of  the  human  soul.  Sensitiveness,  and  the 
desire  to  create  a  passionate  beauty,  were  not 
fit  substitutes  for  that  patient  and  courageous, 
that  fearless  imagination  which  alone  could 
have  given  truth  to  so  simple  and  so  unseizable 
a  problem.  More,  in  his  handling  of  the  con- 
clusion of  his  tale,  Stevenson's  emotion  fell  to  a 
lower  plane,  and  his  talent  played  him  quite 
false.  He  became  too  intent  upon  his  rendering 
of  the  idea  ;  his  literary  sense  took  command 
when  his  knowledge  failed.  That  is  the 
weakness  of  all  these  three  stories. 


in 

Finally,  in  the  first  division,  we  have  seven 
stories.  Providence  and  the  Guitar  and  The 
Treasure  of  Franchard  are  what  we  may  call,  if 
we  wish  to  do  so,  sentimental  stories.    Both  are 

126 


SHORT     STORIES 

comedies  of  light  character,  both  show  certain 
influences  ;  but  to  both  the  manner,  tender  and 
amused,  is  so  appropriate  that  we  are  pleased  as 
we  were  meant  to  be  pleased.  Both  contain 
good  characterisation  and  an  unstrained  know- 
ledge. Both  are  so  entirely  naive  in  conception 
that  we  do  not  question  the  inspiration  by 
which  they  were  produced.  In  style  and 
character  dissimilar,  but  in  humour  of  a  like 
kind,  are  The  Suicide  Club  and  The  Bottle  Imp. 
These  four  stories  are  all  marked  with  the 
whimsical  and  charming  manner  which  made 
Stevenson  so  many  friends  in  life.  All  are 
more  or  less  lifted  by  fantasy  above  their 
common  play  with  the  humours  and  the  pathos 
of  daily  affairs.  They  are  founded  upon 
Stevenson's  natural  attitude — The  Suicide  Club, 
more  convincingly  than  The  Superfluous  Man- 
sion, in  which  story  the  idea  appears  in  its 
native  ingenuousness,  is  an  example  of  Steven- 
son's constant  wish  (a  wish  not  unshared  by 
others)  that  he  might  be  singled  out  mysteri- 
ously by  the  agent  for  some  strange  adventure 
in  the  manner  of  "  The  White  Cat."  The  young 
man  in  The  Superfluous  Mansion,  it  will  be 
remembered,  was  thrilled  by  an  invitation  to 
enter  a  carriage  in  which  a  solitary  lady  sat  : 
his  adventure  thereafter  was  more  common- 
place, for  Stevenson's  wish  had  in  fact  gone  no 

127 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

further  than  the  invitation  to  the  carriage.  So 
Prince  Florizel  embodied  a  desire  for  strange 
safe  experience,  such  as  all  lonely  children  feel ; 
and  Stevenson  was  as  much  gratified  as  we  are 
at  the  adventure  of  the  young  man  with  the 
cream  tarts.  My  own  opinion  is,  that  it  was  the 
young  man  with  the  cream  tarts  who  mattered  ; 
and  that  in  the  subsequent  intrigues  the  story 
falls  away  to  the  level  of  The  Rajah's  Diamond. 
To  be  accosted  by  a  young  man  with  cream 
tarts  in  a  locality  so  picturesque  as  Leicester 
Square — that  is  romance  :  to  go  to  the  suicide 
club,  and  to  participate  in  what  follows,  is  to 
leave  romance  for  picturesque  stimulation  of 
interest  by  bizarre  incident.  The  young  man, 
I  think,  is  art  :  the  rest  might  have  been  in- 
vented by  a  person  without  imagination,  and  so 
we  might  call  it  craft.  Nevertheless,  even  if 
the  events  subsequent  to  the  young  man  with 
the  cream  tarts  take  on  a  more  commonplace 
air,  they  have  yet  an  individuality  above  that 
of  the  tales  in  The  Rajah's  Diamond,  and  the 
peculiar  fantastic  bravado  of  Stevenson's  writing 
maintains  the  quality  of  surprise  with  extreme 
gusto.  The  Bottle  Imp  is,  to  me,  comparable  in 
quality  with  Thrown  Janet  alone  ;  and  these 
two  stories  offer  the  two  most  successful 
examples  of  Stevenson's  art  as  a  short-story 
writer.    Each  in  its  way  is  perfect,  in  form  and 

128 


SHORT     STORIES 

in  manner.  The  Beach  of  Falesd,  more  anec- 
dotal, and  less  fine  in  form  than  any  of  the  other 
stories  in  this  division,  has  excellences  of 
character,  emotion,  and  reality  which  may 
elsewhere  be  considered  to  be  lacking.  In  all 
its  details  it  is  possibly  more  vital  and  more 
worth  the  telling  than  The  Pavilion  on  the 
Links,  which  in  form  is  superior,  but  which,  in 
convention,  is  inferior.  I  know  of  nothing 
with  which  to  compare  The  Beach  of  Falesd  ; 
and  The  Pavilion  on  the  Links  is  perhaps  not 
wholly  outside  the  range  of  so  accomplished  a 
craftsman  as  Sir  Arthur  Conan  Doyle,  or  so 
determined  a  romancer  as  Sir  Arthur  Quiller- 
Couch.  That  may  be  so,  and  very  likely  both 
those  gentlemen  admire  The  Pavilion  on  the 
Links  very  much.  The  fact  that  requires  to  be 
recorded  here  of  this  story  is  that  it  sustains  its 
own  note  magnificently ;  and  that  if  we  grant  this 
type  of  story  the  right  to  be  described  as  art 
The  Pavilion  on  the  Links  is  the  best  example 
of  the  type  known  to  us.  It  is  continuously 
exciting  ;  it  is  not  oppressively  false  ;  and  it  is 
handled  with  extreme  competence.  Possibly 
one  admires  its  craftsmanship,  its  consummate 
treatment  of  a  theme  from  whose  reality  one 
withdraws  one's  conviction  when  the  story's 
grip  has  relaxed,  more  than  one  admires  its 
quality  as  a  work  of  imagination.  If  that  is  so, 
I  129 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

one  must  certainly  regard  The  Pavilion  on  the 
Links  as  a  magnificent  example  of  craft,  but  on 
a  lower  artistic  plane  than  Stevenson's  best 
work. 

That  brings  to  an  end  our  consideration  of 
the  three  rough  divisions  formulated  at  the 
beginning  of  this  chapter.  It  is  possible  now  to 
group  the  stories  into  their  particular  kinds,  and 
to  attempt  to  obtain,  from  an  examination  of 
these,  some  more  general  estimate  of  Steven- 
son's ability  as  a  writer  of  short  stories.  As  a 
preliminary  to  this  it  will  be  desirable  to  set 
forth  what  may  be  regarded  as  a  principle  of 
judgment ;  and  then  to  tabulate  the  stories  in 
their  various  kinds.  Thus  we  shall  be  able  to 
eliminate  the  inferior  stories,  and  to  arrive  at 
certain,  I  hope  reasonable,  conclusions  as  to 
the  place  occupied  by  the  better  stories  both  in 
Stevenson's  output  and  in  the  art  of  the  short 
story. 

IV 

What  do  we  demand  of  a  short  story  before 
we  are  willing  to  consider  that  it  deserves  the 
name  of  art  ?  And  is  art,  as  I  am  sorry  to 
know  that  many  admirers  of  Stevenson  would 
at  this  juncture  ask,  worth  bothering  about  ? 
Art  is  surely  the  quality  which  distinguishes 
some  of  these  stories  from  others  ;    and  art,  to 

130 


SHORT     STORIES 

me,  is  the  disinterested  rendering,  to  perfection, 
of  a  theme  intensely  felt  through,  and  in 
accordance  with,  the  artist's  philosophic  con- 
ception of  life.  I  do  not  suggest  that  art  must 
involve  the  conscious  expression  of  a  consistent 
philosophy.  I  think  it  should  not  do  that. 
But  unless  a  writer  has  a  considerable  aesthetic 
and  emotional  experience  which  does  directly 
inform  his  work  with  a  wisdom  greater  than  our 
utilitarian  scheme  of  conventional  morality,  no 
practical  experience  of  life  and  no  sense  of 
aesthetic  form  can  suffice  to  make  that  writer 
an  artist.  Mr.  Clive  Bell,  in  his  very  brilliant 
and  amusing  book  "Art,"  says  that  "art  is 
significant  form,"  which  is  a  very  much  better 
and  less  pretentious  definition  than  the  one  I 
have  given.  It  is  also  easier  to  apply  ;  but  I 
purposely  added  a  reference  to  the  artist's 
philosophic  conception,  because  it  seems  to  me 
that  there  can  be  no  art  which  is  not  primarily 
a  thing  of  unblemished  artistic  sincerity.  A 
thing  pretended  (artistically,  not  morally  pre- 
tended) can,  I  think,  no  more  be  art,  in  spite 
of  its  significant  form,  than  it  can  be  artistically 
sincere.  It  may  be  retorted  that  there  is 
nothing  in  this  connection  between  the  artist 
and  the  charlatan  ;  but  there  is.  There  is  the 
craftsman,  one  who,  denied  or  forgoing  the 
artist's  intellectual  basis,  makes  goods  like  unto 

131 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

works  of  art,  which  are  charged  with  signifi- 
cance of  form,  but  not  with  that  consistency 
with  philosophic  belief  which  makes  significant 
the  artistic  vision.  For  the  artist's  vision  is 
not  merely  executive  :  it  is  conceptual.  And 
while  significant  form  means  perfect  execution 
of  the  artist's  concept,  there  must  be  a  relative 
connection  between  the  concept  and  the  artist's 
fundamental,  and  possibly  inscrutable  or  in- 
expressible, "  idea."  Otherwise  the  brilliant 
men  would  have  it  all  their  own  way,  which  is 
obviously  not  the  law  of  such  things.  To  take 
an  example.  I  regard  The  Pavilion  on  the  Links 
as  doubtful  art.  In  form  it  is  better  than 
certain  stories  which  seem  to  me  superior  in 
content,  better  than,  say,  The  Beach  of  Falesri. 
But  it  seems  to  me  empty,  without  heart,  so 
that  its  warmth  is  like  the  warmth  of  anger, 
and  is  chilled  when  its  excitement  is  done. 
Ought  there  not  to  remain  in  one's  mind,  when 
the  story  is  finished,  some  other  emotion  than 
stale  excitement  ?  I  think  there  ought.  I 
think  that  an  aesthetic  emotion  remains  in  the 
case  of  all  art  that  is  really  art ;  that  one 
continues  to  feel,  not  the  immediate  clash  of 
will  or  incident,  but  the  author's  true  emotion, 
of  wThich  the  mere  incidents  of  the  story  are 
only  the  bridge  which  the  author  has  chosen 
to  bear  his  emotion  by  symbol,  or  example,  into 

132 


SHORT     STORIES 

our  hearts.  If  I  were  to  say  of  The  Pavilion 
on  the  Links  :  "  It  is  not  true,"  I  should  by 
ninety-nine  of  every  hundred  people  be  called 
unimaginative,  and  told  that  "  nobody  ever 
said  it  was."  But  of  course  I  should  mean, 
not  that  the  incidents  were  rare,  but  that 
Stevenson  had  never  artistically  believed  them, 
that  they  hung  suspended  in  the  air  only  by 
virtue  of  their  power  to  interest  or  to  excite, 
by  means  of  the  "  heat  of  composition."  I 
should  mean  that  Stevenson  had  not  first 
imagined  the  story,  but  that  he  had  planned  it 
in  cold  blood,  saying,  "  We'll  have  an  estate, 
and  a  pavilion,  and  two  men  who  have 
quarrelled  ..."  and  so  on,  when  he  might 
equally  well  have  been  planning  to  describe  a 
dairy,  or  a  balloon,  or  a  cataclysm  at  St.  Malo. 
If  I  look  for  emotion  in  the  story  I  find  none. 
If  I  look  for  an  aesthetic  idea  I  find  none. 
Perhaps  that  is  where  Mr.  Bell  revives.  The 
story  stands  there  as  a  piece  of  virtuosity  ;  and 
if  that  is  deliberate  virtuosity,  if  there  is  no 
artistic  conviction  behind  it,  then  the  story  is  a 
fake.  I  think  it  is  a  fake.  I  am  quite  ready  to 
think  of  it  as  an  extraordinary  clever  piece  of 
business.  But  if  it  is  fake,  it  is  not  art.  Does 
significant  form  imply  the  presence  of  a  con- 
viction or  merely  of  craft  ? 

On  the  other  hand,  I  find  what  I  should  like 
133 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

to  call  conceptual  integrity  in  Thrawn  Janet 
and  in  The  Beach  of  Falesci,  and  these  stories 
seem  to  me  to  be  art.  For  the  same  reason, 
The  Treasure  of  Franchard,  Providence  and  the 
Guitar,  and  The  Bottle  Imp  seem  to  me  to  be  art. 
In  all  these  stories  I  am  conscious  of  aesthetic 
conviction.  I  am  aware  of  that  delightful 
emotion  also  in  The  Young  Man  with  the  Cream 
Tarts,  and  in  other  parts  of  The  Suicide  Club,  but 
not  in  all.  I  see  art  baulked  by  literature  in  Will 
o'  the  Mill,  in  Markheim,  and  Olalla ;  and,  greatly 
muddied  by  clotted  moralising,  in  Br.  Jekyll 
and  Mr.  Hyde,  which  as  a  whole  is  suspiciously 
glib,  as  though  it  had  been  falsified  in  the 
transformation  from  dream  to  morality.  I  do 
not  find  art  in  the  other  short  stories  by 
Stevenson.  They  seem  all  to  have  been  pro- 
duced, some  from  one  impulse,  some  from 
another,  some  with  painstaking  shrewdness, 
some  from  vanity,  some  even  from  a  want  of 
something  better  to  do.  The  artist  receives  an 
inspiration,  which  shapes  his  work  with  the 
fine  glow  of  vitality  (much  as  a  sick  person  is 
transformed  by  mountain  air,  until  his  features 
shape  and  colour  into  a  new  fleshly  verve). 
The  craftsman  waits  upon  invention,  and 
sedulously  cultivates  its  friendliness,  with  a 
thrifty  economy  which  brings  him  in  the  course 
of  his  life  much  respect  from  his  fellows.    Br. 

134 


SHORT     STORIES 

Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde  was  dreamed  by  an  artist  ; 
and  was  written  by  a  craftsman.  If  Sir  J.  M. 
Barrie  had,  as  Stevenson  once  wrote,  "  a 
journalist  at  his  elbow,"  shall  we  not  admit 
that,  in  the  same  position,  Stevenson  had  an 
equally  dangerous  devil,  who  goes  by  the  name 
of  a  craftsman  ? 


If  what  has  been  said  above  has  any  applic- 
ability to  this  matter,  we  have  reduced  to  five 
the  number  of  Stevenson's  short  stories  to  which 
we  can  give  the  name  of  art.  In  mentioning 
that  number,  I  have  ventured  to  eliminate  The 
Suicide  Club,  which  contains  several  episodes, 
excluding  The  Young  Man  with  the  Cream  Tarts 
whose  particular  character  does  not  seem  to  me 
to  warrant  the  use  of  the  term  "art."  That 
leaves  us  with  Thrown  Janet,  The  Beach  of 
Falesd,  The  Bottle  Imp,  Providence  and  the 
Guitar,  and  The  Treasure  of  Franchard.  One  of 
these  is  a  "  bogle  "  story,  one  is  a  realistic  story 
of  adventure  in  the  South  Seas,  one  is  a  fairy 
tale,  and  the  others  are  light  comedies,  touched 
with  fancy  which  transfigures  without  falsify- 
ing the  underlying  artistic  sincerity  of  their 
conception.  We  have  eliminated,  for  what 
may  in  some  cases  appear  to  be  insufficient 
reasons,  some  twenty  odd  stories  (counting  the 

135 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

various  episodes  of  The  Rajah's  Diamond  and 
The  Dynamiter  as  stories).  Of  the  whole 
number  of  stories,  two  (or,  with  the  little  tale 
in  Catriona,  three)  are  concerned  with  "  bogles," 
namely  Thrawn  Janet  and  The  Body-Snatcher. 
Two  others  are  also  concerned  with  the  super- 
natural :  they  are  The  Bottle  Imp  and  The  Isle 
of  Voices.  Three  are  psychological — Will  o'  the 
Mitt,  Markheim,  and  Olalla.  Four  are  light 
comedies — The  Story  of  a  Lie,  John  Nicholson, 
The  Treasure  of  Franchard,  Providence  and  the 
Guitar.  Two  are  picturesque  or  romantic  tales 
of  incident — The  Pavilion  on  the  Links  and 
The  Merry  Men.  One  is  a  realistic  tale  of 
incident — The  Beach  of  Falesd.  The  rest 
belong  to  a  class  of  fantastic  mystery  or 
criminal  tale  which  is  not,  apart  from  the 
attractiveness  of  its  mayonnaise,  intrinsically 
of  great  value.  It  is  from  the  five  tales  named 
at  the  beginning  of  this  section  that  we  shall 
perhaps  draw  our  best  material  for  the  appraise- 
ment of  Stevenson's  chief  success  as  a  short- 
story  writer. 

Thrawn  Janet,  then,  is  an  extraordinarily 
successful  tale  of  the  devil's  entry  into  the 
body  of  an  old  woman,  imagined  with  great 
power,  and  told  with  enormous  spirit.  The 
Beach  of  Falesd  is  the  narrative,  by  a  trader,  of 
his  arrival  at  a  South  Sea  island,  his  marriage 

136 


SHORT     STORIES 

to  a  native  girl,  and  his  overthrow  of  a  treacher- 
ous rival.  The  character  of  the  man  who  tells 
the  story — Wiltshire — is  well-sustained,  the 
character  of  Uma,  the  native  wife,  is  amazingly 
suggested,  considering  how  little  we  see  her  and 
considering  that  we  receive  her,  as  it  were, 
through  the  trader's  report  alone.  For  the 
rest,  the  story  has  vividness  of  local  colouring, 
and  a  good  deal  of  feeling.  The  Bottle  Imp,  the 
fairy  tale,  is  told  without  fault  in  a  manner  of 
great  simplicity.  It  relates  to  the  successive 
purchases  and  sales,  the  sales  always,  by  the 
conditions  of  purchase,  being  made  at  a  figure 
lower  than  that  of  the  purchase,  of  a  magic 
bottle  as  potent  as  Aladdin's  lamp  ;  and  to  the 
certainty  of  Hell  which  is  involved  in  the  con- 
tinued possession  of  the  bottle  until  the  lessee's 
death.  The  story  was  written  for  the  Samoan 
natives,  and,  as  far  as  I  am  able  to  judge,  it 
bears  in  a  remarkable  degree  the  impress  of 
native  ways  of  thought.  It  has,  that  is  to 
say,  the  naivete  and  gravity  of  the  folk-tale. 
Providence  and  the  Guitar  is  a  gay  story  of  the 
misadventures  of  some  travelling  musicians 
who  receive  poor  welcome  from  those  whom 
they  seek  to  entertain,  but  who  reconcile  at 
length  the  claims  of  art  and  duty  as  they  find 
them  opposed  in  the  lives  of  certain  disunited 
hosts.    The  Treasure  of  Franchard  is  the  simple 

137 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

tale  of  an  eccentric  philosopher,  his  more 
stolid  wife,  and  of  a  little  boy  whose  wisdom 
leads  him  to  check,  by  means  which  are  proved 
legitimate  only  by  their  adequacy,  the  philoso- 
pher's diversion  from  the  path  of  happiness. 
The  theft  by  the  waif  of  certain  treasure  which 
the  philosopher  has  discovered,  to  the  risk  of 
his  immortal  soul  and  the  danger  of  his  present 
happiness  ;  and  the  appropriate  restoration  of 
that  treasure  when  it  will  be  of  vital  service — 
upon  so  slight  an  invention  does  the  story 
progress. 

The  point  to  be  observed  in  all  these  stories  is 
that  they  possess  unquestionable  unity.  Only 
one  of  them,  The  Beach  of  Falesd,  is  in  any  true 
sense  a  narrative.  The  others  are  examples  of 
situation  imposed  upon  character.  In  each 
there  is  an  absolute  relation  between  the  con- 
ception or  inspiration  and  Stevenson's  treat- 
ment. Each  will  bear  the  pressure  which  may 
legitimately  be  exerted  by  the  seeking  imagina- 
tion. In  Providence  and  the  Guitar  alone  is  there 
the  least  air  of  accident ;  and  for  this  reason 
Providence  and  the  Guitar,  which  has  this  slight 
air  of  possible  manipulation,  is  less  good  than 
the  others.  The  Beach  of  Falesd,  although  a 
narrative,  and  although  its  perfection  of  form 
is  thus  affected  (since,  with  our  consciousness  of 
narrative,  is  interrupted  the  singleness  of  our 

138 


SHORT     STORIES 

aesthetic  emotion)  has  a  strict  consistency  of 
action.  Whether  this  consistency  is  native,  or 
whether  it  is  aided  by  the  imagined  personality 
of  the  narrator,  which  may  thus  impose  an 
artificial  unity  upon  the  tale,  I  am  unable  to 
determine.  The  other  three  stories,  The  Bottle 
Imp,  Thrown  Janet,  and  The  Treasure  of 
Franchard9  granting  to  each  story  its  own 
convention,  seem  to  me  to  be  perfect  examples 
of  their  craft. 

VI 

To  have  written  three  such  stories  would 
alone  be  a  sufficient  performance  to  give 
Stevenson's  name  continued  life  among  our 
most  distinguished  writers.  That,  in  addition 
to  these  three  stories,  he  should  have  written 
two  others  of  such  considerable  value  as  The 
Beach  of  Falesci  and  Providence  and  the  Guitar, 
and  so  many  more  of  varying  degrees  of  excel- 
lence, from  The  Pavilion  on  the  Links  and  The 
Suicide  Club  to  The  Merry  Men  and  The  Isle  of 
Voices,  is,  I  think,  enough  to  warrant  a  very 
confident  claim  that  Stevenson  not  only  was 
at  his  best  in  the  short  story,  but  that  he  was 
among  the  best  English  writers  of  short  stories. 
His  particular  aptitude  in  this  branch  of  his 
many-sided  talent  was  due,  as  I  have  said,  to 
the  fact  that  he  was  here  able  to  see  and  to 

139 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

perform  with  a  single  effort  which  did  not 
unduly  strain  his  physical  endurance.  Whereas, 
in  continuous  effort,  he  lost  the  strength  of  his 
first  impulse  in  the  exhausting  labour  which  is 
involved  in  any  lengthy  exercise  of  the  imagina- 
tion, in  the  short  story  he  was  able  to  give 
effect  immediately  to  his  impulse  to  set  out  or 
to  create  complete  his  imagined  or  invented 
theme.  What  fluctuation  there  is  to  be  ob- 
served of  talent  or  performance  is  due  entirely 
to  the  nature  of  his  inspiration.  If  the  idea 
came  unsought,  if  some  clear  and  inevitable 
idea  for  a  short  story  suggested  itself  to  him, 
the  result,  providing  it  was  suited  to  his  genius, 
and  not  merely  to  his  literary  ability,  was  a 
short  story  of  distinguished  or  even  of  first- 
class  quality.  If,  in  the  pursuance  of  his 
business  as  a  literary  craftsman,  he  "  hit-on  " 
a  practicable  plan  for  a  short  story,  the  result 
was  almost  certain  to  be  distinguished  in 
craftsmanship,  acceptable  to  the  wide  and 
diversified  tastes  of  the  educated  public,  and,  in 
fact,  to  be  distinguishable  from  his  genuine 
works  of  art  only  by  the  application  of  some 
test  which  should  call  in  question  the  nature  of 
his  preliminary  inspiration. 

Stevenson  was  so  distinguished  a  craftsman 
that  he  could  often  deceive  his  critics,  but  for 
that  deception  I  do  not  think  he  can  be  held 

140 


SHORT     STORIES 

morally  responsible.    His  other  habit,  of  being 
able  to  deceive   himself  about   the   nature   of 
his  inspiration — exemplified,  I  believe,  in  The 
Suicide  Club,  for  reasons  which  I  have  already 
given — is  more  serious.    It  is  a  habit  illustrated 
with  more  force  in  the  longer  romances,  and 
takes  the  form  of  beginning  a  story  with  a 
genuine    romantic    notion    (or,    if   the    reader 
prefers,  inspiration),  of  finding  that  inspiration 
fail,  and  of  proceeding  nevertheless  with  the 
work  so  begun,   relying  upon  his  talent,   his 
invention,  or  his  literary  skill  to  carry  through 
the    remaining   performance    at   a   level    near 
enough  to  that  established  by  his  first  inspira- 
tion to  convince  (at  its  worst,  to  delude)  the 
reader.    This  habit,  I  am  sure,  was  not  indulged 
in  bad  faith  ;  it  was  sometimes,  perhaps  nearly 
always,  unconscious,  or  only  partly  conscious. 
It  very  likely  is  the  habit  of  all  modern  writers 
whose  work  is  regulated  by  the  laws  of  supply 
and   demand.     Equally,   it   was   possibly  the 
habit  of  all  past  writers  of  fiction,  because  they 
too  were  affected  in  the  same  way.     But  in 
Stevenson's  case  the  supply  of  a  commodity  took 
a  peculiar  form  of  falseness  which  proved  much 
to  the  taste  of  his  readers.    It  took  the  form  of 
a  sort  of  deliberate  romanticism  with  which  I 
have  dealt  at  length  in  the  next  chapter,  and  to 
which  I  have  given  the  more  exactly  descriptive 

141 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

term  of  picturesqueness.  I  believe  this  sort  of 
romanticism  gave  rise  to  such  a  story  as  The 
Pavilion  on  the  Links  ;  and  if  I  am  right  in 
regarding  such  picturesqueness  as  a  bastard 
form  of  art,  as,  in  fact,  a  particularly  cunning 
form  of  craft,  then  its  persistence  in  Stevenson 
makes  all  the  more  wonderful,  and  all  the  more 
notable,  his  magnificent  performance  in  the 
stories  singled  out  for  praise  in  the  present 
chapter.  It  also  enforces  the  desirability  of 
some  very  close  discrimination  between  the 
work  of  Stevenson  which  is  the  genuine 
product  of  his  indubitable  genius  and  the  work 
which  was  produced  by  his  talent,  his  inven- 
tion, and  his  literary  skill. 


142 


VIII 
NOVELS     AND     ROMANCES 

i 
In  beginning  this  chapter  upon  that  section  of 
Stevenson's  work  which,  whatever  may  be 
one's  impression  of  its  intrinsic  merit,  has  at 
least  the  importance  of  being  the  section 
most  considerable  in  bulk,  I  should  like,  as  a 
matter  of  convenience,  to  define  several  terms 
in  the  sense  in  which  they  will  be  used  in  the 
course  of  the  chapter.  It  should  be  clearly 
understood  at  the  outset  that  the  proposed 
definitions  are  to  be  given,  not  with  any  claim 
for  their  ultimate  value,  but  as  a  mere  pre- 
caution against  misunderstanding.  In  each 
case  the  term  is  one  which  often  is  very  loosely 
used  ;  and  it  seems  the  most  honest  thing,  as 
well  perhaps  as  the  most  wary,  to  say  very 
simply  what  one  understands  by  such  and  such 
words.  Many  writers  who  do  not  define  terms 
have  the  irritation  of  finding  those  terms 
counter-glossed  by  other  critics  acting  in  all 
good  faith,  and  the  consequence  is  that  they 

143 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

seem    to   be    made   responsible   for   meanings 
divergent  from  those  which  they  hold. 

By  the  word  "  imagination,"  then,  I  mean 
that  power  of  sympathy  which  enables  a  man 
to  understand  (i.e.  to  put  himself  in  the  place 
of)  the  invented  figure  or  scene  which  he  is 
describing  either  in  words  or  in  thought.  I  do 
not  mean  by  the  exercise  of  will,  but  by  the 
spontaneous  outflowing  of  full  or  partial  per- 
ception. By  "  imagination  "  I  mean  nothing 
galvanic  or  actively  creative  ;  but  an  emotional 
translation,  as  it  were,  of  the  creator's  spirit 
into  the  object  created.  Creation,  the  act  of 
bodying  forth  the  imaginations  in  form  either 
symbolic  or  conventional,  requires  "  inven- 
tion." M  Invention,"  whether  of  incident  or 
of  character,  is  what  is  generally  meant  by 
writers  who  use  the  word  "  imagination." 
Wr iters  often  say  that  work  is  "  imaginative  " 
because  it  has  a  sort  of  hectic  improbability  ; 
but  they  mean  that  it  exhibits  a  riotous  or 
even  a  logical  inventiveness,  not  that  it  shows 
any  genuine  power  of  imaginative  sympathy. 
Invention,  one  may  say,  is  essential  to  a 
work  of  imagination  :  it  is  the  fault  of  much 
modern  novel-writing  that  it  is  poor  in  in- 
vention, a  fact  which  stultifies  the  writer's 
imagination  and  gives  an  unfortunate  air  of 
mediocrity  to  work  which  is  essentially  imagi- 

144 


NOVELS     AND     ROMANCES 

native.  The  creation  of  an  atmosphere  is 
founded  upon  imagination  ;  but  in  the  absence 
of  invention  the  modern  imaginative  writer 
too  frequently  bathes  in  atmosphere  to  a  point 
of  tedium,  and  then  attempts  to  give  vitality 
to  his  work  by  mere  violence  of  incident  or  of 
language.  The  word  "  imaginative  "  (defined 
by  all  persons  so  as  to  include  their  own  pet 
limitations)  is  often  used  by  unimaginative 
writers  in  descriptions  of  lonely  children,  a 
fact  which  has  led  those  who  have  been  lonely 
in  childhood  to  ascribe  to  themselves  an 
attribute  so  much  admired  ;  but  Stevenson, 
I  think,  has  a  rather  good  comment  upon  this 
sort  of  broody  dullness  when  he  describes  "  one 
October  day  when  the  rusty  leaves  were  falling 
and  scuttling  on  the  boulevard,  and  the  minds 
of  impressionable  men  inclined  in  about  an 
equal  degree  towards  sadness  and  conviviality." 
That  lowness  of  spirits  which  makes  a  man 
respond  to  external  influences  is  well  known  ; 
but  to  describe  susceptibility  or  impression- 
ability as  imagination  is  misleading.  A  cat  is 
very  impressionable ;  but  a  cat's  apparent 
intuitions  in  the  matter  of  food  or  even  of  good- 
will are  not  understanding  as  the  term  has 
been  defined.  Imagination,  therefore,  may  be 
said  to  be  over-claimed,  for  the  word  is  loosely 
used  in  most  cases,  even  by  practised  writers, 
K  145 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

where  "  invention  "  or  "  fancy  "  would  more 
properly  fit.  In  particular  it  is  the  habit  of  all 
minor  critics  whatsoever  to  use  the  word  "imagi- 
nation "  when  they  ought  rather  to  use  the 
term  "  poetic  invention."  It  is  that  confusion 
which  renders  valueless  so  much  criticism  of 
modern  fiction,  in  which  the  authors,  being  by 
tradition  under  no  compulsion  to  be  poetical, 
are  frequently  condemned  as  unimaginative 
because  they  follow  the  tradition  of  their 
craft. 

A  second  distinction  which  it  is  desirable  to 
make  in  view  of  what  follows  is  the  one  between 
Romance  and  Realism.  The  word  "  romance  " 
is  used  in  a  sort  of  ecstasy  by  too  many  con- 
ventional people  ;  the  word  "  realism  "  is  by 
such  critics  applied  to  one  particular  technical 
method.  It  has  seemed  better  for  the  imme- 
diate purpose  to  restrict  the  word  "  romance  " 
to  a  purely  technical  meaning,  since  Romance, 
to  have  any  value  whatever,  must  form  a  part 
of  our  conception  of  reality.  It  is  the  divorce 
of  Romance  from  Reality  which  has  led  to  its 
decay ;  it  is  not  that  Romance  has  been 
cruelly  done  to  death  by  Realism.  Romance 
since  Stevenson  has  become  sentimental  and 
unbelievable.  That  is  why  Romance  has 
no  friends,  but  only  advocates.  The  word 
"  romance,"  then,  is  in  this  chapter  used  to 

146 


NOVELS     AND     ROMANCES 

describe  a  fiction  the  chief  interest  in  which 
is  supported  by  varied  incidents  of  an  un- 
common or  obsolete  nature.  The  word  "  novel " 
is  applied  to  a  fiction  in  which  the  chief  interest 
is  less  that  of  incident  and  more  the  interest 
awakened  by  character  and  by  a  gradual 
relation  of  happenings  probable  in  themselves 
and  growing  naturally  out  of  the  interplay  of 
character.  The  word  "  realism  "  is  used  in 
relation  to  the  critical  interpretation  of  actual 
things.  It  must  not  be  regarded  as  describing 
here  an  accumulation  of  detail  or  a  preference 
for  unpleasant  subjects.  For  that  use  of  the 
word  one  may  refer  to  our  leading  critical 
journals  passim.  The  accumulation  of  detail 
belongs  to  a  technical  method,  and  should  be 
treated  on  its  merits  as  part  of  a  technical 
method.  Realism,  as  the  word  is  here  used,  is 
applied  only  to  work  in  which  the  author's 
invention  and  imagination  have  been  strictly 
disciplined  by  experience  and  judgment,  and 
in  which  his  direct  aim  has  been  precision 
rather  than  the  attainment  of  broad  effects. 
It  is  used  consciously  as  a  word  of  neither 
praise  nor  blame  ;  though  it  is  possible  that 
I  may  exaggerate  the  merits  of  clear  perception 
above  some  other  qualities  which  I  appreciate 
less. 


147 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 


ii 

Therefore,  when  I  say  that  Stevenson  pro- 
gressed as  a  novelist  and  as  a  tale-teller  from 
romance  to  realism  I  hope  to  be  absolved  of 
any  wish  to  suit  facts  to  a  theory.  The  fact 
that  he  so  progressed  simply  is  there,  and  that 
should  be  sufficient.  He  progressed  from 
Treasure  Island,  which  he  wrote  when  he  was 
a  little  over  thirty,  to  Weir  of  Hermiston,  upon 
which  he  was  engaged  at  the  time  of  his  death 
at  the  age  of  forty-four.  There  can  be  no 
question  of  his  advance  in  power.  Treasure 
Island  is  an  excellent  adventure-story  ;  Weir 
of  Hermiston  seemed  to  have  the  makings  of  a 
considerable  novel,  incomparably  superior  to 
any  other  novel  or  romance  ever  written  by 
Stevenson.  Between  the  two  books  lie  a  host 
of  experiments,  from  Prince  Otto  to  the  rather 
perfunctory  St.  Ives,  through  Kidnapped  and 
The  Master  of  Ball  ant  rae,  to  The  Wrecker, 
Catriona,  and  The  Ebb  Tide.  One  finds  in 
The  Master  of  Ballantrae  the  highest  point  of 
the  romantic  novels,  not  because  as  a  whole  it 
is  a  great  book,  but  because  it  has  very  dis- 
tinguished scenes ;  and  thereafter  follows  a  per- 
ceptible decline  in  raciness.  Stevenson  still  had 
the  knack,  and  could  still  make  the  supporters 
of  his  convention  look  as  clumsy  as  ghouls,  but 

148 


NOVELS     AND    ROMANCES 

his  zest  was  impaired.    He  did  now  with  pains 
what  before  had  been  the  easiest  part  of  his 
work.    "  Play  in  its  wide  sense,  as  the  artificial 
induction    of   sensation,    including   all   games 
and  all  arts,  will,  indeed,  go  far  to  keep  him 
conscious  of  himself  ;  but  in  the  end  he  wearies 
for  realities,"  said  Stevenson  in  The  Day  After 
To-morrow.      From   the    inexperience    of  real 
life  which  in  1882  led  him,  by  means  of  a  map 
and  some  literary  inspirations,  to  make  up  a 
tale  such  as  he  thought  he  would  himself  have 
liked  as  a  boy,  he  turned  in  later  years  to  work 
more  profound.     His  romance  six  years  later 
than  Treasure  Island  had,  besides  its  adventures 
and  its  pawky  narration,  a  moral  theme  ;    ten 
years  later  it  had  no  theme  at  all,  but  a  faint 
dragging  sweetness  due  to  the  reintroduction 
of  two  old  friends  and  the  picture  of  a  con- 
ventional heroine  ;    at  the  end  of  his  life  he 
began  three  historical  romances,  none  of  which 
was  ever  finished,  and  only  one  of  which  ever 
proceeded  beyond  its  first  chapters.    It  is  true 
that    the    pretty,    heavily    figured    style    was 
still  at  command ;    there  was  no  cessation  of 
skill.     There  never  was  any  cessation  of  skill. 
If  skill  were  needed   Stevenson  had   it   ever 
ready.     "  I  have  been  found  short  of  bread, 
gold  or  grace,"  says  St.  Ives  ;    "  I  was  never 
yet  found   wanting  an   answer."     That   is   a 

149 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

point  to  note  in  Stevenson's  equipment,  that 
he  was  always  very  apt  with  the  pen.  Having 
turned  writer  in  his  youth,  he  remained  a 
writer  to  the  end.  He  could  not  dictate  a 
letter  but  what  the  phrases  ran  in  accustomed 
grooves,  half-way  to  the  tropes  of  his  Covenant- 
ing manner.  So  it  was  that  themes  too  slight, 
as  in  Prince  Otto,  and  themes  very  complicated 
(as  in  The  Wrecker),  came  readily  to  be  em- 
barked upon.  He  was  not  sufficiently  critical 
of  a  theme,  so  long  as  it  seemed  superficially  to 
offer  some  scope  for  his  skill ;  which  accounts 
for  his  abandoned  fragments — e.g.  Heathercat, 
The  Great  North  Road,  Sophia  Scarlet,  The 
Young  Chevalier — and  for  the  inequalities  in 
even  his  best  romances.  Whatever  theme  he 
chose  he  could  write  upon  it  with  such  damn- 
able skill  that  nothing  truly  came  amiss  or 
really  stretched  to  the  full  his  genuine  talent. 
The  theme,  such  as  it  was,  lay  to  hand  ;  there 
wanted  nothing  but  his  skill  and  the  labour  of 
composition.  That,  curiously  enough,  shadows 
out  the  occupation  of  the  literary  hack  (a  sad 
person  who  writes  for  money  and  only  more 
money,  and  whose  days  are  circumscribed  by 
the  need  for  continuous  work  in  the  field  of 
romance) ;  but  although  Stevenson  claimed 
to  write  for  money,  "  a  noble  deity  "  (see  a 
humorous  but  truthful  passage  in  the  letter  of 

150 


NOVELS     AND     ROMANCES 

January,  1886,  to  Mr.  Gosse),  he  claimed  also 
to  write  for  himself,  and  in  this  sense  he  was, 
to  our  relief,  and  in  spite  of  any  misdirected 
labours,  an  artist.  There  is,  of  course,  much 
cant  written  and  spoken  about  writing  for 
money,  both  for  and  against ;  but  the  man 
who  has  no  preference  between  the  themes 
upon  which  he  will  write  for  money  must  be 
a  very  professional  writer,  and  the  hack  is 
only  a  base  virtuoso.  That  is  why  it  is  worth 
putting  upon  record  that  Stevenson,  after 
saying  he  wrote,  not  for  the  public,  but  for 
money,  added  :  "  and  most  of  all  for  myself, 
not  perhaps  any  more  noble  (i.e.  than  money), 
but  more  intelligent  and  nearer  home."  He 
wrote  variously  from  diversity  of  taste  :  a 
more  interesting  and  tantalising  question  is 
that  of  his  object. 

in 
Mr.  Henry  James,  in  criticising  a  selection 
of  our  modern  novelists,  describes  himself  as 
reading  their  work  with,  one  imagines,  con- 
tinuous interest,  and  then,  in  face  of  all  the 
phenomena  which  have  industriously  been 
gathered  for  his  inspection,  asking  for  some- 
thing further.  Mr.  Henry  James,  apparently, 
wants  to  know  "  why  they  do  it."  It  would 
not  be  in  place  here  to  say  that  the  modern 

151 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

novelists  are  all  to  some  extent  followers  of 
Mr.  James  ;  but  it  is  very  interesting  to  put 
that  same  question  (amounting  to  a  sort  of 
cui  bono  ?)  to  the  romantic  novelists.  One 
would  like  to  know  what  Stevenson  aimed  at 
in  his  romances.  One  does  not  receive  from  any 
one  of  the  romances  the  thrill  given  by  a  perfect 
work  of  art.  Their  interest  is  broken  and  epi- 
sodic ;  they  fall  apart  in  strange  places,  and 
show  gaps,  and  (as  in  the  case  of  works  by  Wilkie 
Collins  and  Mr.  Conrad)  one  or  two  of  them, 
including  The  Master  of  Ballantrae,  are  patched 
together  by  means  of  contributory  "  narra- 
tives "  and  "  stories  "  which  can  never,  what- 
ever the  skill  of  their  interposition,  preserve 
any  appearance  of  vital  form,  and  which,  at 
the  best,  can  be  no  more  than  exhibitions  of 
virtuosity.  They  retain  their  continuity  of 
interest  only  by  means  of  the  narrator's  con- 
tinuance ;  and  the  use  of  "  narrations  "  itself 
is  a  device  throwing  into  strong  relief  the 
incongruities  of  the  tale  and  its  invented 
scribe.  They  offend  our  sense  of  form  by  all 
sorts  of  changes  of  scene,  lapses  of  time, 
discursiveness,  and  those  other  faults  which  are 
nowadays  so  much  remarked.  And,  above  all, 
once  the  last  page  is  turned,  we  remember  one 
or  two  characters  and  one  or  two  incidents, 
and  we  wonder  about  the  corollary,  or  what- 

152 


NOVELS     AND     ROMANCES 

ever  it  is  that  Mr.  James  wonders  about.  We 
have  been  entertained,  excited,  amused,  some- 
times enthralled.  In  reading  the  books  again, 
as  we  are  soon,  because  of  our  forgetfulness, 
able  to  do,  we  recover  something  of  the  first 
pleasure.  But  of  Stevenson's  aim  we  can 
discover  no  more  than  we  can  discover  of  the 
aim  of  the  hack-writer.  We  feel  that  his 
work  is  better,  that  it  has  greater  skill,  that 
it  is  graceful,  apt,  distinguished  even.  We 
feel  that,  of  its  kind,  it  is  far  superior  to  any- 
thing since  written.  Was  there  any  aim 
beyond  that  of  giving  pleasure  ?  Need  we 
look  for  another  ?  It  is  true  that  the  problem- 
novel  is  discredited,  and  it  is  true  that  our 
most  commercially  successful  novelists  are 
those  who  can  "  tell  a  story."  It  is  also  true 
that  our  so-called  artistic  stories  are  like  the 
needy  knife-grinder.  I  propose  to  return  later 
to  this  point,  so  we  will  take  another  one  first. 
"  Vital,"  says  Stevenson,  "  vital— that's  what 
I  am,  at  first :  wholly  vital,  with  a  buoyancy 
of  life.  Then  lyrical,  if  it  may  be,  and  pic- 
turesque, always  with  an  epic  value  of  scenes, 
so  that  the  figures  remain  in  the  mind's  eye  for 
ever." 

We  may  well  grant  the  picturesqueness  ; 
and  we  may  grant  a  nervous  buoyancy  of 
fluctuating    high    spirits.      Through    all    the 

153 


R.    L.    STEVENSON, 

novels  there  are  passages  of  extreme  beauty, 
to  which  we  may  grant  the  description 
"  lyrical  "  ;  and  many  of  the  famous  scenes 
have  value  which  it  is  open  to  anybody  to  call 
epical  if  they  wish  to  do  so.  It  is  the  word 
"  vital  "  that  we  find  difficult  to  accept,  and 
the  "  buoyancy  of  life."  For  if  there  is  one 
thing  to  be  inferred  from  the  contrivances  and 
the  slacknesses  and  the  other  shortcomings  of 
Stevenson's  romances  to  which  we  shall  gradu- 
ally be  able  to  make  reference,  it  is  that  they 
lack  vitality.  They  have  a  line  brag  of  words, 
and  they  have  line  seencs  and  incidents  ;  but 
where  is  there  any  one  of  them  in  which  the 
author  can  sustain  the  pitch  of  imagining  that 
will  carry  us  on  the  wings  of  a  vital  romance  ? 
I  am  referring  at  this  moment  to  this  one  point 
only.  I  am  saying  nothing  about  the  books  as 
pieces  of  literary  artifice.  There  is  not  one  of 
Stevenson's  own  original  romances  that  is  not 
made  in  two  or  three  or  even  a  hundred  flights. 
There  is  not  one  that  is  not  pieced  together 
by  innumerable  inventions,  so  that  it  is  a  sort 
of  patchwork.  That  is  a  persistent  defect.  It 
is  in  Treasure  Island,  it  is  in  The  Master,  it  is 
in  The  Wrecker  and  it  is  in  Weir,  patent  to  the 
most  casual  glance.  And  the  cause  of  that  is 
low  vitality — his  own  and  the  book's.  Not 
one  of  them,  not  even  Treasure  Island,  not  even 

154 


NOVELS     AND     ROMANCES 

The  Master  of  Ballantrae,  which  falls  in  two, 
has  any  powerful  inevitability.  These  romances 
are,  in  fact,  the  romances  of  a  sick  man  of 
tremendous  nervous  force,  but  of  neither 
physical  nor  intellectual  nor  even  imaginative 
energy.  One  may  see  it  in  the  flickering  of 
Alan  Breck.  Alan  Breck  is  the  most  famous 
of  all  Stevenson's  characters,  with  the  possible 
exception  of  Silver  :  does  he  remain  vivid  all 
the  time  ?  He  does  not.  He  loses  vitality 
several  times  in  the  course  of  Kidnapped  ;  he 
hardly  attains  it  in  Catriona.  There  is  no 
fault  there  ;  there  is  a  weakness.  Stevenson's 
romances  were  based  upon  a  survival  of  boyish 
interests  ;  they  are  full  of  fantastic  whips  and 
those  clever  manipulations  with  which  writers 
sometimes  conceal  weaknesses  ;  they  have  a 
tremendous  vain  Scots  savour  of  language  and 
retort  ;  they  have  exciting,  impressive,  and 
splendidly  vivid  scenes.  But  the  quality  they 
have  not  is  the  fine  careless  rich  quality  of  being 
vital.  If  we  think,  in  reading  them,  that  they 
are  vital,  the  cause  of  our  deception  is  Steven- 
son's skill.  He  disarms  us  by  his  extraordinary 
plausible  air  of  telling  a  story.  We  are  as 
helpless  as  boys  reading  Treasure  Island.  But 
Stevenson  is  always  telling  a  story  without  end ; 
and  it  is  never  really  a  story  at  all,  but  a  series 
of  nervous  rillets  making  belief  to  be  a  river. 

155 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

There  are  ingredients  in  the  story  ;  there  is 
David  Balfour  starting  out  from  his  old  home, 
and  coming  to  his  uncle's  house,  and  being  sent 
nearly  to  his  death  up  the  dreadful  stair  ;  and 
there  is  the  kidnapping  of  David,  and  then  the 
arrival  on  board  of  the  survivor  from  a  run- 
down boat,  who  proves  to  be  Alan  ;  the  fight ; 
and  the  march  after  Alan  ;  the  Appin  murder  ; 
and  the  flight  of  David  and  Alan — all  mag- 
nificently described,  well  invented,  well 
imagined,  but  all  as  episodes  or  incidents,  not 
as  a  story.  Something  else,  some  other  things, 
all  sorts  of  other  things,  might  just  as  well  have 
happened  as  those  things  which  make  the 
story  as  we  know  it.  There  is  no  continuous 
vitality  even  in  Kidnapped  ;  and  yet,  on  that 
score,  it  is  the  best  of  the  romances.  It  has  a 
greater  "  buoyancy ':  (though  not  precisely, 
perhaps,  the  "  buoyancy  of  life  ")  than  any 
of  the  other  historical  romances.  It  does  not 
compare  with  The  Master  of  Ballantrae  for 
dignity  or  even  for  the  distinction  of  isolated 
scenes  ;    but  for  vitality  it  is  superior. 


IV 

Why  Stevenson  should  have  adopted  in  so 
many  instances  the  curious  and  unsatisfactory 
method,  involving  so  much  falseness,  of  the 

156 


NOVELS     AND     ROMANCES 

first   person   singular,    with   those   man-traps, 
the    things    the    narrator    could    never    have 
known,  supplied  by  leaves  from  other  narra- 
tives,   it    is    hard    to    understand.      Defoe's 
method  was  simple  and  laborious  ;    but  it  was 
pure  narrative,   and  as  far  as  one  recollects, 
there  was  none  of  this  making  up  by  inter- 
polated passages.     The  person  of  the  narrator 
was   maintained   all  the   time.     So  with  the 
picaresque  romances.    The  narrative,  used  by 
Dickens  and  Wilkie  Collins,  does  indeed  offer 
some    analogy ;     but    never    a    very    happy 
example  of  what  is  at  best  a  broken  and  un- 
believable  stratagem.     Stevenson,   of  course, 
used  it  in  a  marked  way  in  Br.  Jekyll  and 
Mr.  Hyde  ;    and  in  Treasure  Island  one  cheer- 
fully accepts  the  convention  (only  protesting 
that  the  Doctor's  interference  causes  a  break 
both  irritating  and,  technically,  unscrupulous). 
With  the  exception  that  the  Doctor's  portion 
is  somehow  brought  in  about  the  middle  of 
the  book,  the  way  the  story  came  to  be  written 
is  not  allowed  to  worry  us  after  the  first  sen- 
tence.    Treasure  Island   is   not,    therefore,    a 
great  offender.     Kidnapped  starts  in  a  simi- 
larly abrupt  way,  and  this  book  and  Catriona 
are  kept  fairly  closely  to  the  convention.    But 
in  The  Master  of  Ballantrae  and  in  The  Wrecker 
there  are  several  inter-narratives  which,  even 

157 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

if  in  the  earlier  book  they  provide  certain  keys, 
do  seriously  affect  the  form  of  the  story. 

The  disadvantage  of  the  narrator  is  manifest 
enough.  Every  step  outside  his  probable 
knowledge  must  be  elaborately  explained.,  or 
he  will  become  uncomfortably  superhuman  ; 
he  can  never  be  in  danger  which  deprives  him 
of  speech  or  the  power  to  write,  but  has  often 
lived  to  a  green  and  unromantic  old  age  by 
the  time  his  marvellous  faculty  for  remember- 
ing things  leads  him  to  "  take  up  the  pen." 
("  They  might  easily  take  it  in  their  heads  to 
give  us  chase,"  says  the  Chevalier  de  Burke, 
M  and  had  we  been  overtaken,  /  had  never 
written  these  memoirs,,99)  If  he  is  the  hero  he 
risks  being  a  prig  or  a  braggart  (in  St.  Ives  he 
is,  somehow,  for  all  his  gentility,  not  a  gentle- 
man) ;  and  he  often  succeeds  in  being  rather 
a  ninny,  albeit  a  courageous  ninny.  It  is  this 
fact,  possibly,  that  accounts  for  Mr.  Stanley 
Weyman's  "  gentlemen  of  France  "  and  the 
deplorable  "  heroes  "  of  many  another  costume 
romance  inspired  by  Stevenson's  examples. 
If  he  is  the  good  old  retainer, — as  is  Mackellar 
in  The  Master — he  must  overcome  one's  dis- 
trust of  his  sleek  literary  craft.  These  are 
side  issues  of  the  main  one — which  is  that 
such  narratives  are  improbable.  Their  appa- 
rent virtue,  which  in  itself  is  a  snare,  lies  in 

158 


NOVELS     AND     ROMANCES 

the  fact  that  they  keep  the  reader's  eye 
focussed  upon  the  narrator,  and  seem  thus  to 
give  homogeneity  to  a  book.  They  enable  the 
author  to  refuse  detachment  and  to  mingle 
with  his  characters,  tapping  them  upon  the 
arm  so  that  the  reader  receives  their  full 
glance,  or  bidding  them  give  some  little 
personal  exhibition  for  the  naturalness  of  the 
book.  Stevenson  saw,  perhaps,  that  such  a 
method  solved  some  of  his  difficulties.  He 
loved  ease  of  demeanour.  He  could  use  his 
Covenanting  style  at  will,  with  the  quaint, 
shrewd  twists  of  language  which  do  not  fail  to 
strike  us  impressively  as  we  read  ;  and  he 
could  throw  off  the  task  of  creating  a  hero 
whom  we  should  recognise  as  such  in  spite  of 
all  things,  as  we  recognise  Don  Quixote  or 
Cousin  Pons  or  Prince  Myshkin.  Also,  the  use 
of  the  "I"  probably  made  the  tale  better  fun 
for  himself.  It  was  perhaps  part  of  the  make- 
belief.  It  avoided  formality  ;  it  brought  him 
nearer  his  canvas  ;  it  saved  him  the  need  of 
focussing  the  whole  picture.  That,  construc- 
tively, was,  as  I  have  suggested  earlier  in  another 
way,  his  prime  weakness  as  a  novelist.  He 
could  not  see  a  book  steadily  and  see  it  whole. 
Partly  it  may  have  been  that  by  putting 
himself  in  the  frame  he  made  the  picture  a 
panorama — "  the  reader  is  hurried  from  place 

159 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

to  place  and  sea  to  sea,  and  the  book  is  less  a 
romance  than  a  panorama  "  is  Stevenson's  own 
admission  in  the  case  of  The  Wrecker — but 
most  influentially,  I  think,  it  was  that  he  had 
really  not  the  physical  strength  and  the 
physical  energy  to  grasp  a  book  entire,  or  to 
keep  his  invention  and  imagination  at  any 
extreme  heat  for  any  length  of  time.  What- 
ever may  be  the  case  of  this,  however,  it  seems 
clear  that  the  first  person  singular  is  a  difficult 
and  a  tricky  method  to  employ,  abounding  in 
risk  of  accident,  and  much  inclined  to  make 
for  improbability,  unless  the  writer  is  content 
absolutely  to  limit  the  narrator's  knowledge 
to  things  experienced,  with  details  only  filled 
out  from  hearsay,  and  unless  he  has  super- 
human powers  of  detachment.  One  is  inclined 
to  suppose  that  Stevenson  for  a  considerable 
time  fought  shy  of  the  objective  male  central 
character  after  his  failure  with  Prince  Otto, 
where  the  use  of  the  first  person  might,  indeed, 
have  been  distinctly  amusing  as  an  illuminant. 
At  any  rate,  fully  half  of  his  romantic  tales  are 
personally  narrated  ;  and  in  only  one  of  them, 
where  the  narrator  is  a  real  character  and  only 
partially  a  "  combatant,"  does  the  power  of 
detachment  powerfully  appear. 


160 


NOVELS     AND     ROMANCES 


v 

Prince  Otto,  of  course,  is  only  one  out  of  the 
many  self-portraits.  He  is,  as  it  were,  Steven- 
son's Hamlet,  which  is  not  quite  as  good  as 
Shakespeare's  Hamlet.  He  is  nearer  to  Steven- 
son than  David  Balfour,  because  David  Balfour 
is  an  ideal,  while  Prince  Otto  is  an  apology. 
All  Stevenson's  heroes,  in  fact,  are  tinged  with 
the  faint  complacent  self-depreciation  which 
is  capable  of  being  made  truly  heroic,  or 
merely  weak,  or,  possessed  of  that  "  something 
that  was  scarcely  pride  or  strength,  that  was 
perhaps  only  refinement,"  very  human.  But 
not  one  of  these  heroes  is  complete.  All,  as  it 
were,  are  misty  about  the  edges.  The  vigorous 
David  Balfour  falls  into  the  self-distrust,  not 
of  a  young  man  of  strength,  but  of  a  self- 
engrossed  student  :  weakness  is  paramount  in 
the  main  character  in  The  Ebb  Tide ;  the 
dandiacal  St.  Ives  is  at  the  mercy  of  circum- 
stance, waiting  upon  the  next  thing,  reliant 
only  upon  Stevenson's  good  will,  horribly 
unmasculine  in  his  plans  to  please.  Mackellar 
is  a  puritanical  coward,  but  magnificently 
suggested ;  Loudon  Dodd,  and  even  young 
Archie  Weir,  being  both  very  moral  and,  one 
imagines,  very  inexperienced  in  the  ways  of 
life,  combine  courage  with  weakness  most 
L  161 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

pitiable.      They    are    all    feminine,    brave    in 
desperation,   weak  in  thought.     They  are  all 
related  to  Jaek  Matcham  in  The  Black  Arrow. 
Stevenson  admired  courage,  and  he  possessed 
courage,  as  women  admire  and  possess  courage. 
He  loved  a  brave  man,  and  a  tale  of  adventure, 
as  women  love  these  things.    He  did  not  take 
them  for  granted,  but  must  hint  and  nibble  at 
them  all  the  time,  thinking,  perhaps,  that  he 
was   making  a   portrait,   but   instead   of  that 
making  what  represents  for  us  a  tortured  ideal. 
"  I    should    have    been    a    man-  child,"    says 
Catriona.     "  In  my  own  thoughts  it  is  so  I  am 
always  ;    and  I  go  on  telling  myself  about  this 
thing  that  is  to  befall  and  that.    Then  it  comes 
to  the  place  of  the  fighting,  and  it  comes  over 
me  that  I  am  only  a  girl  at  all  events,  and 
cannot  hold  a  sword  or  give  one  good  blow  ; 
and  then  I  have  to  twist  my  story  round  about, 
so  that  the  fighting  is  to  stop,  and  yet  me  have 
the  best  of  it,  just  like  you  and  the  lieutenant ; 
and  I  am  the  boy  that  makes  the  fine  speeches 
all  through,  like  Mr.  David  Balfour."    That  is 
why   Prince   Otto,    long   the   test   of  the   true 
Stevensonian,  seems  to  us  now,  increasingly,  a 
lackadaisical  gimcrack,  as  bloodless  as  a  con- 
ceit, losing  by  its  spinning  as  a  tale  all  the 
fantastic  effect  it  might  have  enjoyed  as  one 
of  the  New  Arabian  Nights.     It  has  a  great 

162 


NOVELS     AND     ROMANCES 

deal  of  beauty,  and  a  good  deal  of  perception 
both  of  character  and  of  situation  ;  but  the 
beauty  droops  and  sickens  among  the  meshes 
of  delicate  writing,  and  the  perception  is  all 
upon  the  surface  of  life,  and,  even  so,  abstract 
and  without  the  impulse  of  human  things. 

It  is  the  faint  humour  of  Stevenson  that 
makes  the  book  seem  sickly.  It  is  that  faint 
humour  which  brings  so  much  of  his  heroic 
work  sliding  sand-like  to  our  feet.  For  it  must 
be  realised  that  if  one  is  going  to  be  romantical 
one  must  have  either  no  humour  at  all  (which 
perhaps  is  an  ideal  state)  or  a  strong,  trans- 
figuring humour  which  is  capable  of  exuberance 
and  monstrosity  as  well  as  of  satiric  deprecia- 
tion. Stevenson's  humour  was  of  that  almost 
imperceptible  kind  which  grows  in  Scotland, 
and  which  has  given  rise  to  the  legend  that 
Scotsmen  "  joke  wi'  deeficulty."  It  was  dry, 
it  was  nonsensical,  it  was  satiric  ;  it  was  the 
humour  that  depends  upon  tone,  a  delicacy  of 
emphasis  or  pause.  It  was  the  humour  of  a 
sick  man  who  had  high  spirits  and  very  little 
morbidity.  Now  in  Prince  Otto  there  is 
morbidity  ;  it  is  not  a  healthy  book.  It  could 
not  have  been  written  by  an  active  and 
vigorous  man  ;  and  I  do  not  think  Stevenson 
could  have  written  it  after  he  went  to  Samoa. 
Its  literary  forbear,   "  Harry  Richmond,"   al- 

163 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

though  a  very  cumbrous  and  mannered  work, 
has  a  trenchant  vigour  which  keeps  alive  our 
admiration  after  our  interest  has  dropped. 
It  is  elaborate  and  pompous  ;  but  it  has  power. 
Prince  Otto  owes  its  best  moments  to  a  purely 
literary  skit  on  the  English  traveller  among 
foreign  courts  :  that  skit,  it  is  true,  is  priceless. 
Apart  from  Sir  John  Crabtree,  however,  the 
book  depends  entirely  for  its  charm  upon  its 
faint,  almost  swooning,  beauty  of  style  ;  and 
it  is  indeed  surprising  that  the  book  should 
have  enjoyed  among  Stevenson's  male  wor- 
shippers so  much  handsome  appreciation.  It 
is  so  quizzical,  where  it  is  not  sentimental  or 
"  conventional,"  that  it  is  half  the  time 
engaged  in  self-consumption,  which  is  as 
though  one  should  say  that  it  is  eaten  up  with 
vanity. 

VI 

By  Stevenson's  own  account,  the  first  fifteen 
chapters  of  Treasure  Island  were  written  in  as 
many  days.  He  explains  that  he  consciously 
and  intentionally  adopted  an  "  easy  "  style. 
"  I  liked  the  tale  myself,"  he  says  ;  "  it  was 
my  kind  of  picturesque."  Well,  it  was  the 
simplest  kind  of  picturesque,  a  sort  of  real 
enjoyment  of  the  thing  for  its  own  sake  ;  and 
our  own  enjoyment  of  it  is  of  the  same  kind. 

164 


NOVELS     AND     ROMANCES 

It  is  extraordinarily  superior  to  the  imitations 
which  have  followed  it,  for  this  reason  if  for  no 
other,  that  it  was  the  product  of  an  enjoying 
imagination.  It  is  possible  to  read  Treasure 
Island  over  and  over  again,  because  it  is  good 
fun.  There  is  a  constant  flow  of  checkered 
incident,  there  is  enough  simple  character  to 
stand  the  treasure-seekers  on  their  legs,  and 
the  book  is  a  book  in  its  own  right.  It  does  not 
need  defence  or  analysis  ;  it  sustains  its  own 
note,  and  it  is  as  natural  and  jolly  an  adventure 
story  as  one  could  wish.  Moreover,  the  ob- 
servation throughout  is  exceedingly  good,  as 
well  as  unaffected.  It  is  interesting  to  notice 
how  vividly  one  catches  a  picture  from  such  a 
brief  passage  as  this  (in  Chap.  XXVII)  :  "  As 
the  water  settled  I  could  see  him  lying  huddled 
together  on  the  clean,  bright  sand  in  the 
shadow  of  the  vessel's  sides.  A  fish  or  two 
whipped  past  his  body."  Or  again,  on  the 
following  page,  when  Jim  Hawkins  has  thrown 
overboard  another  of  the  mutineers  :  Ci  He 
went  in  with  a  sounding  plunge  ;  the  red  cap 
came  off,  and  remained  floating  on  the  surface  ; 
and  as  soon  as  the  splash  subsided  I  could  see 
him  and  Israel  lying  side  by  side,  both  wavering 
with  the  tremulous  movement  of  the  water." 
Such  slight  passages  really  indicate  an  unusual 
quality  in  the  book.     They  convey  a  distinct 

165 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

impression  of  the  scene  which  one  may  feel 
trembling  within  one's  own  vision  and  hearing. 
The  fact  that  Treasure  Island  has  so  clear  a 
manner,  unaffectedly  setting  out  in  simple 
terms  incidents  which  have  the  bare  con- 
vincingness of  real  romance,  gives  that  book 
a  singular  position  among  the  romances  of 
Stevenson.  The  further  fact  that  the  incidents 
have  some  more  coherence  in  themselves  than 
incidents  have  in  some  of  our  author's  romances 
serves  to  add  to  the  book's  effect.  Something 
of  this  coherence  (I  except  from  the  range  of 
this  term  the  doctor's  sudden  irruption  into 
authorship,  and  the  picturesque  but  arbitrary 
introduction  of  the  castaway)  may  have  re- 
sulted from  the  quickness  with  which  the  tale 
was  written.  For  details  of  the  composition 
of  Treasure  Island,  the  reader  may  see  the 
essay  My  First  Book  in  Essays  on  the  Art  of 
Writing. 

The  Black  Arrow,  written  later,  is  a  tale  of  the 
Wars  of  the  Roses,  and  is  a  much  more  common- 
place piece  of  work.  It  is  also  a  less  original 
kind  of  story  ;  for  serials  of  a  similar  character 
have  always  been  a  feature  of  boys'  papers,  as 
long  as  boys'  papers  have  been  published. 
There  is,  indeed,  a  constant  ebb  and  flow  of 
incident,  but  the  writing  is  hardly  recognisable 
as  Stevenson's,  and  the  dramatis  personce  are 

166 


NOVELS     AND     ROMANCES 

without  character.  It  might  almost,  apart 
from  the  fact  that  the  hero  and  heroine  arrange 
to  marry,  have  been  written  by  the  late 
G.  A.  Henty,  who  perhaps,  even  if  he  had  made 
John  Matcham  really  John  Matcham,  would 
have  substituted  for  violent  episodes  some 
more  continuous  fable. 

Next  to  Treasure  Island  among  the  historical 
romances  comes  Kidnapped,  with  its  brilliant 
pictures  and  its  clear,  confident  invention. 
Regarded  simply  as  a  tale  of  adventure,  it  is 
exciting,  picturesque,  vivid  ;  it  has  qualities 
of  intensity  (that  is  to  say,  of  imagination) 
which  make  it  without  question  distinguished 
work.  There  are  pictures  of  the  country  in 
Chapter  XVII  which  are  full  of  grace  and 
tenderness  ;  it  has  a  stronger,  clearer  humour 
than  we  find  in  any  of  the  novels  until  we  come 
to  those  in  which  Mr.  Osbourne  collaborated 
the  incidents  are  immediate  in  their  effect. 
To  say  so  much  is  to  say  little  enough  ;  it  is 
to  say  what  must  have  been  said  in  1886,  at 
the  time  the  book  was  published.  The  story, 
however,  is  incomplete  without  Catriona,  and 
Catriona  in  particular  has  given  rise  to  such 
a  very  bad  novel-writing  convention  that  it  is 
difficult  to  see  The  Adventures  of  David  Balfour 
(which,  combined,  the  two  stories  relate)  as 
anything   but    a   malign    influence    upon   the 

167 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

English  romantic  novel,  an  influence  which  has 
brought  it  to  a  pitch  of  sterility  hard  to  forgive. 
It  must  be  said  at  once,  however,  that  Steven- 
son was  always  better  than  his  imitators,  and 
so  these  stories  will  be  found  superior  to  their 
imitations.  Catriona  is  manifestly  uninspired 
work,  artificial  through  and  through,  a  sad 
sentimental  anecdote  bringing  to  chagrin  the 
reader's  admiration  for  Kidnapped.  It  is  not 
that  Catriona  is  unreadable  ;  it  is  very  read- 
able indeed.  In  fact  that  is  the  trouble  about 
the  book,  that  it  has  every  sort  of  meretricious 
attraction,  with  so  little  in  it  that  will  honestly 
bear  examination.  It  is  palpable  fake ;  an 
obvious  attempt  to  recapture  the  first  fine 
carelessness  of  Kidnapped.  For  Kidnapped 
is  a  good  book.  It  has  vitality  in  it,  and  it  has 
Alan  Breck,  who,  for  all  that  his  vanity  has 
been  flattered  by  so  many  adorers,  remains  on 
the  whole  a  fine  picture  of  a  vain,  brave  Scot. 
Also  good  is  the  picture  of  David's  uncle,  which 
is  very  dryly  humorous,  very  shrewd,  and  excep- 
tionally horrible.  These  two  pieces  of  charac- 
terisation, as  well  as  some  minor  ones,  are 
enough  to  give  bones  to  a  book  that  is  both 
readable  and  estimable.  It  would  be  enough, 
I  think,  to  justify  the  suggestion  that  Kid- 
napped is  the  best  Scottish  historical  romance 
since  Scott,  and  indeed  one  of  the  best  modern 

168 


NOVELS     AND     ROMANCES 

historical  romances  written  in  what  we  may 
for  the  moment  call  the  English  language. 

St.  Ives  belongs  to  the  same  order  as  Catriona. 
It  is  accomplished  and  bad  ;  a  fact  of  which  a 
recently  published  letter  of  Stevenson's  shows 
that  he  was  fully  and  contritely  aware.  Skill 
marks  it ;  the  fable  is  poor  and  irregular  ;  and 
the  narrator  is  exceedingly  unpleasant.  It  is 
worthy  of  remark  that  Sir  Arthur  Quiller- 
Couch,  who  completed  the  book,  is  responsible 
for  its  most  impressive  and  thrilling  moments. 
Otherwise  it  shows  the  passive  acceptance  by 
Stevenson  of  his  own  bad  convention,  and  it 
is  fit  only  to  be  popular  at  the  circulating 
libraries.  It  is  even  tedious,  which  is  a  sure 
passport  to  the  suffrages  of  those  who  benefit 
by  the  circulating  libraries. 

The  Master  of  Ballantrae,  however,  is  a 
different  affair.  Here  we  have  a  story  which, 
though  it  is  broken  and  incomplete,  has  ele- 
ments of  noble  beauty.  It  loses  hold  upon  the 
reader  in  the  middle,  where  there  is  a  lapse  of 
something  like  seven  years ;  and  the  intro- 
duction of  Secundra  Dass  is  the  ruin  of  the 
book  as  a  work  of  art,  although  no  doubt,  as 
it  supplies  a  new  interest,  it  may  have  proved 
welcome  to  those  reading  for  distraction. 
There  are  some  few  pieces  of  sheer  greatness  in 
the  book,  drawn  with  an  economy  and  sim- 

169 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

plicity  which  separates  them  from  the  inferior 
portions  as  clearly  as  oil  and  water  are 
separated.  An  instance  may  be  found  in  the 
scene  where  Mr.  Henry  strikes  the  Master. 
It  would  be  impossible  to  carry  over  in  a 
quotation  any  hint  of  the  effect  which  the 
next  sentence,  in  its  due  context,  has  upon  the 
reader  : 

"  The  Master  sprang  to  his  feet  like  one  transfigured  ; 
I  had  never  seen  the  man  so  beautiful.  i  A  blow ! '  he 
cried.     1 1  would  not  take  a  blow  from  God  Almighty  ! ' " 

In  the  book  that  moment  seems  in  some  extra- 
ordinary way  to  bring  the  scene  leaping  to  the 
eye.  The  whole  scene  of  the  duel,  and  especi- 
ally of  its  sequel,  is  fine.  There  are  other  scenes 
equally  magnificent  :  even  the  climax,  which 
is  a  collapse,  does  not  blind  us  to  the  fact  that 
we  had  been  led,  by  the  remarkable  tension  of 
the  preceding  narrative,  to  expect  a  poignantly 
tragical,  and  not  merely  a  conventionally 
romantic,  conclusion.  But  the  climax  throws 
up  the  weakness  of  the  book,  its  rambling 
course,  its  wilful  attempts  to  follow  the 
wanderings  of  a  central  figure  so  fascinating 
to  Mr.  Mackellar  (and  to  ourselves)  as  the 
Master,  its  lack  of  framework  and  true  body 
of  character.  The  Master  is  clear ;  Mr. 
Mackellar  is  nicely  touched ;  the  Chevalier 
de  Burke  is  pleasantly  farcical.    In  one  scene, 

170 


NOVELS     AND     ROMANCES 

after  the  duel,  Lord  Durrisdeer  and  Mr.  Henry's 
wife  seem  to  catch  the  infection  of  life  into 
which  the  heat  of  excitement  has  thrown  the 
whole  book  :  but  they  are  truly  no  more  than 
puppets,  and  relapse  before  ever  they  have 
stood  upright.  Even  the  Master  sometimes  is 
no  more  than  a  collection  of  traits  ;  and  if  the 
book  were  not  so  finely  dressed  it  would 
assuredly  cut  a  poorer  figure.  Its  magnificent 
passages  it  is  impossible  to  forget ;  its  defects 
are  so  numerous,  and  so  obvious  to  be  seized 
upon,  that  it  seems  hard  to  insist  that  they  are 
present.  Nevertheless,  they  are  the  defects 
inherent  in  Stevenson's  romances. 


VII 

In  three  novels  Stevenson  collaborated  with 
his  stepson,  Mr.  Lloyd  Osbourne.  The  first 
book,  The  Wrong  Box,  of  which  Mr.  Osbourne 
claims  to  have  written  almost  the  whole,  need 
not  long  detain  us.  Its  amusingness  is  due  to 
repetitions  of  phrase  (e.g.  "  venal  doctor," 
which  is  the  best  of  them),  farcicality  of  scene, 
and  easy  variety  of  complication  ;  but  it  does 
not  succeed  in  being  particularly  amusing, 
after  all,  so  that  we  may  leave  it  safely  among 
the  novels  enjoy  ably  to  be  read  in  railway 
trains.    The  other  two  books,  The  Wrecker  and 

171 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

The  Ebb  Tide,  show  much  more  clearly  Steven- 
son's hand.  The  former  touches  every  now 
and  then  a  number  of  his  early  experiences  in 
France  ;  and  the  manipulation  is  elaborate, 
wasteful,  and  ill-considered.  But  the  book  is 
engrossing.  The  Ebb  Tide  is  to  all  seeming  a 
short  story,  or  rather,  two  related  short  stories, 
since  it  is  under  sixty  thousand  words  in  length, 
and  is  simplified  down  to  certain  swiftly  suc- 
cessive incidents  in  the  lives  of  four  men. 
Both  books  are  the  result  of  experience  in  the 
South  Seas  ;  both  seem  to  show,  as  far  as  it  is 
possible  for  me  to  judge,  a  closer  and  truer 
(though  a  less  heroic)  understanding  of  men 
than  heretofore.  In  another  way,  it  may  be 
said  that  we  have  been  shown  previously 
romantic  figures,  invented  upon  a  quite  well- 
recognised  and  comprehended  basis  of  con- 
vention, doing  certain  things  which  were  all 
in  the  game.  Those  who  prefer  this  type  of 
character  will  possibly  say  that  the  Master  and 
Otto  and  Alan  Breck  belong  to  the  grand  style 
in  literature,  that  style  which  gave  us  Medea 
and  Prometheus  and  Lear.  That  may  be  so. 
It  may  be  that  in  those  novels  which  we  have 
yet  to  consider  Stevenson  threw  aside  the 
grand  style,  which,  as  far  as  he  was  concerned, 
was  the  style  of  make-belief,  the  style  of  figure, 
trope,  costume,  and  the  picturesque.     But,  to 

172 


NOVELS     AND     ROMANCES 

me,  Stevenson,  in  putting  aside  this  grand 
style,  which  is  an  artificial  style  if  it  spring  not 
from  the  very  heart  of  the  writer,  came  at  last 
into  the  field  of  his  experience  and  tried  to 
show  something  of  the  world  he  had  actually 
seen.  That  is  why,  to  me,  these  last  three 
novels  of  his  are  intrinsically  the  most  in- 
teresting, because  they  were  the  most  truly 
personal  and  original,  of  all  that  he  wrote. 
They  are  faulty,  and  they  show  still  at  times 
the  glister  of  picturesque  romance  ;  but  Weir 
of  Hermiston  is  widely  recognised  as  Steven- 
son's finest  work,  and  the  other  two  books 
have  certain  substantial  merits  which  may 
well  be  dwelt  upon  here  before  we  arrive  at  the 
general  conclusions  of  this  chapter. 

The  Wrecker,  then,  after  a  curious  induction, 
begins  with  the  education  and  the  artistic 
career  of  Loudon  Dodd,  told  with  an  amiable 
spirit,  and  convincing  us  by  its  sketches  of 
various  kinds  of  life.  It  then  proceeds  to  San 
Francisco,  where  Dodd  joins  the  famous  Jim 
Pinkerton  in  wild-cat  schemes.  At  last  the 
story  proper,  or,  if  we  may  otherwise  express 
it,  the  story  exciting,  begins  with  the  sale  of 
a  wrecked  ship  "  The  Flying  Scud."  Pinkerton 
and  his  ally,  drawn  into  excessive  bidding  by 
the  thought  that  only  hidden  opium  can 
account  for  their  opponent's  pertinacity,  run 

173 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

the  price  up  to  fifty  thousand  dollars,  the 
raising  of  which  gravely  endangers  their  credit 
in  San  Francisco,  and  at  txiat  price  buy  "  The 
Flying  Scud."  Dodd  proceeds  to  the  wreck. 
Meanwhile,  Pinkerton  becomes  bankrupt  ;  but 
Dodd  inherits  a  small  fortune.  The  "  Flying 
Scud  "  is  a  frost.  Dodd  now  plays  detective 
upon  the  man  who  has  tried  to  buy  the 
"Flying  Scud,"  finds  him  and  learns  the 
history  of  the  boat  in  its  details.  It  has  been 
said  already  (by  Stevenson)  that  The  Wrecker 
is  more  of  a  panorama  than  a  romance,  and 
"  panorama  "  seems  a  very  good  description 
for  the  book.  This  kind  of  romance  within 
other  romances  is  written  with  greater  purpose 
by  Mr.  Conrad,  who,  for  all  his  arbitrary 
technical  clumsinesses,  convinces  us  more  of 
the  integrity  of  his  narrative  than  Stevenson 
is  able  to  do  for  The  Wrecker  in  his  elaborate 
explanatory  epilogue.  It  reads  as  though  it 
had  been  written  with  gusto,  but  with  licence, 
as  though  the  collaborators  had  not  scrupled 
to  give  the  tale  its  head.  Its  value  to  us  now, 
however,  is  that  it  gives  a  good,  clear,  realistic 
picture  of  the  life  it  describes.  The  Parisian 
portion  is  unexaggerated  ;  the  San  Francisco 
chapters  are  vivid  ;  the  character  of  Pinker- 
ton,  broad  though  it  is,  has  organic  life  ;  and 
the  voyage  in  the  "  Norah  Creina,"  if  it  has  not 

174 


NOVELS     AND     ROMANCES 

the  poignant  reality  of  Mr.  Conrad's  descrip- 
tions of  the  sea,  and,  if  it  hardly  bears  com- 
parison with  them,  has  yet  a  bright  excitement 
and  rapid  motion  of  great  value.1  Another 
point  is,  that  the  story  was  written,  as  Treasure 
Island  was  written,  with  simplicity  and  for  the 
authors'  own  delight.  Our  delight  in  it  partly 
reflects  their  delight.  Only  partly,  however, 
for  our  appreciation  is  due  also  to  the  ease  with 
which  experience — of  San  Francisco  and  of 
the  South  Seas — is  here  translated  before  our 
eyes  into  a  romance  that  is  as  engrossing  as  its 
predecessors,  and  that  retains  its  hold  upon  us 
without  elaboration  of  pretence. 

The  Ebb  Tide,  although  much  slighter,  is 
more  firmly  handled.  It  is  in  essence  an 
anecdote  ;  but  it  is  closely  and  penetratingly 
seen  ;  its  power  to  transport  us  (as  it  were  by 
Herrick's  imagined  carpet)  to  the  South  Seas, 
and  above  all  its  quick  unobtrusive  rendering 
of  a  different  moral  atmosphere,  combine  to 
make  it  excellent  work.  If  it  is  not  moving 
(and  very  little  of  Stevenson's  work  is  moving) 
it  is  at  least  exciting  and  convincing  within  its 
natural  limitations. 

It  is  with  Weir  of  Hermiston,  however,  that 

1  I  am  not  unaware  that  sr  ne  parts  of  this  book  were  written 
by  Mr.  Osbourne,  and  that  Mr.  Osbourne  claims  responsibility  for 
several  of  the  passages  to  which  the  above  may  seem  directly  to 
r  efer. 

175 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

Stevenson  reached  the  height  of  his  powers  as 
a  realistic  novelist.  Excepting  in  the  handling 
of  Frank  Innes,  who  might  almost  have  been 
hired  out  among  our  dead  writers  of  fiction  as 
a  professional  seducer,  the  precision  of  Weir 
of  Hermiston,  the  bite  of  Stevenson's  con- 
tinuously vigorous  imagination,  is  extra- 
ordinary. Continuity  of  narrative  there  is 
not :  one  must  not  demand  it.  But  unfailing 
precision  of  imagination,  a  thing  of  great 
rarity,  marks  almost  the  whole  of  that  portion 
of  the  book  which  we  have  ;  and  is  matched 
by  the  similar  precision  of  the  character 
drawing.  Kirstie  Elliott  and  the  elder  Weir 
are  alike  in  the  respect  that  they  are  together, 
even  in  the  small  compass  of  this  fragment, 
the  surest  pieces  of  character  created  by 
Stevenson.  The  subsequent  course  of  the 
fable  of  Weir  of  Hermiston,  as  described  by 
Sir  Sidney  Colvin  in  his  admirable  note  to  the 
book,  is  terrifying  to  those  who  admire  the 
fragment  for  its  intrinsic  qualities  ;  but  we 
will  not  seek  too  curiously  into  plans  which 
might  well  have  been  severely  modified  in  the 
wTriting.  Certainly  the  first  nine  chapters 
show  very  few  signs  of  romantic  falsification  ; 
and  if  it  were  not  for  Frank  Innes,  the  novelists' 
hireling,  we  should  be  disposed  to  fear  nothing 
for  the  future. 

176 


NOVELS     AND    ROMANCES 

VIII 

Earlier  in  this  chapter  the  question  was 
raised  of  Stevenson's  object  in  writing  his 
romances.  If  we  read  his  Note  on  Realism  we 
shall  find  that  he  talks  of  "  poignancy  of  main 
design,"  "  the  beauty  and  significance  of  the 
whole,"  "  the  moral  or  the  philosophical  de- 
sign," as  though  that  other  note  to  Sir  Sidney 
Colvin  was  but  a  partial  exposition  of  his  aim. 
The  one,  possibly,  was  a  personal  claim  ;  the 
essay  a  public  profession  ;  and  public  con- 
fession, we  are  aware,  is  apt  to  cling  to  the 
more  desirable  aspects  of  the  truth.  But  the 
essay  has  a  relevant  value,  because  it  speaks 
of  the  author's  rapture  at  being  able  to  muster 
"  a  dozen  or  a  score  "  of  those  essential  "  facts  " 
of  which  "it  is  the  mark  of  the  very  highest 
order  of  creative  art  to  be  woven  exclusively." 
Thereafter  he  admits,  as  most  writers  would 
admit,  that  any  work  of  art  loses  its  original 
force  as  that  force  is  spent  in  execution  and 
diverted  into  channels  unforeseen. 

Without  "  facts "  the  novel  cannot  be 
written.  Obviously  the  good  novel  is  the  one 
that  contains  significant  and  primary  facts 
(not  to  be  perceived  by  all,  but  eventually  to 
be  acknowledged  by  all)  ;  while  the  bad  novel 
is  one  that  contains  insignificant  and  secondary 
M  177 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

facts  (easily  recognisable  by  all  and  acceptable 
to  none).  It  is  very  easy  indeed  to  say  that. 
It  is  more  difficult  to  apply  the  test ;  or  at 
least,  if  one  reads  the  newspaper  criticism  of 
modern  novels,  one  finds  that  there  seems  to 
exist  a  difficulty  in  application.  So  it  is  that 
what  one  writer  regards  as  significant,  another 
writer  considers  contemptible  ;  and  it  is  very 
likely  that  we  should  get  little  satisfaction 
from  an  elaborate  analysis  of  Stevenson's 
chosen  "  facts."  Some  of  these  facts  are  of 
the  greatest  importance  ;  some  of  them  are 
useless.  What  we  must  rather  urge  is  that 
Stevenson,  for  all  his  talk  of  design  and  the 
beauty  of  the  whole,  had  never  the  physical 
energy  to  carry  his  conception  through  on  a 
single  plane  (or,  of  course,  upon  that  inequality 
of  planes  which  may  be  dictated  by  the  char- 
acter of  a  book).  That  is  why  none  of  his 
novels  (he  said,  in  speaking  of  the  difficulty  of 
writing  novels,  "  it  is  the  length  that  kills  ") 
is  on  an  ascending  plane  of  interest  or  on  a 
level  plane  of  performance.  He  simply  had 
not  the  bodily  strength  to  support  the  con- 
tinuous imaginative  strain. 

Further,  it  is  the  mark  of  the  romantic  and 
picturesque  novelist  that  he  is  dependent  upon 
that  particular  form  of  incident  which  provides 
a  prop  for  his  narrative.    In  a  very  crude  way 

178 


NOVELS     AND     ROMANCES 

the  writer  of  serial  stories,  who  ends  an  instal- 
ment with  some  ghastly  suggestion  of  coming 
crime,  is  a  type  of  the  picturesque  novelist  in 
this  connection.  Stevenson,  in  his  historical 
romances,  was  a  picturesque  rather  than  a 
romantic  novelist  ;  he  had  an  eye,  an  ear,  a 
nose  for  an  effect ;  effects  he  must  have,  or 
his  book  would  stop,  since  it  has  rarely  a 
sufficient  impetus  to  cover  the  lapse  in  inven- 
tive skill.  It  was  because  they  offered  no 
effects  that  The  Great  North  Road,  and  Heather- 
cat,  and  The  Young  Chevalier  dried  suddenly 
upon  his  pen,  dead  before  ever  they  were 
begun.  One  can  see  in  these  fragments  the 
sign  of  Stevenson's  weakness.  He  was  "  game  " 
enough  ;  but  he  could  not  make  romance  out 
of  chopped  hay,  such  as  The  Young  Chevalier, 
with  its  bald,  hopeless  attempt  to  galvanise 
the  Master  into  life  again.  It  was,  again,  the 
title  of  The  Great  North  Road,  the  title  of 
Sophia  Scarlet  that  ran  in  Stevenson's  head. 
Titles  for  stories  !  Stories  to  fit  such  titles  !  Is 
that  really  the  way  an  artist  works  ?  Perhaps  it 
is  ;  perhaps  if  they  had  been  written,  and  had 
been  good  stories,  we  should  have  found  them 
appropriate  to  a  degree.  But  they  were  never 
written,  save  as  fragments  ;  because  they  never 
had  any  life.  They  never  had  any  idea.  And 
it   is   in   virtue   of  its   unifying  idea  and  its 

179 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

ultimate  form,  not  its  contributive  incidents 
or  its  more  lively  occasional  properties,  that  a 
novel,  as  such,  is  a  good  novel. 

Now  the  one  book  of  Stevenson's  which  has 
an  idea  is  the  one  which  may  be  mistaken  for 
either  a  tract  or  a  shilling  shocker.  It  is 
Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde.  The  other  books 
have  ideas,  or  notions,  but  they  have  behind 
them  no  unifying  idea.  That  is  why  one 
forgets  what  they  are  about.  The  idea  of 
Treasure  Island  is  "  boy  goes  on  hunt  for 
pirate's  treasure  .  .  .  doctor  .  .  .  wooden-legged 
boatswain,"  and  so  on.  The  idea  for  Kidnapped 
may  have  been  "  boy  kidnapped  .  .  .  meets 
emissary  of  proscribed  Scots  .  .  .  hides  .  .  . 
Appin  murder  .  .  .  flight.  .  .  recovers  property." 
The  genesis  of  The  Master  of  Ballantrae  is 
given  in  a  short  paper,  with  those  words  for 
title,  which  is  included  in  The  Art  of  Writing. 
From  this  very  frank  account,  we  may  see  that 
the  book  began  in  a  flush  of  enthusiasm  for 
"The  Phantom  Ship,"  proceeded  to  an  aged 
anecdote  of  resuscitation,  and  so,  piecemeal, 
and  by  the  joining  together  of  all  sorts  of 
notions  old  and  new,  reached  a  conception  of 
the  Chevalier  de  Burke.  Now  this  sort  of  inven- 
tion, although  it  delights  us  by  its  resourceful- 
ness and  ingenuity,  has  no  relation  to  the 
romance  of  life  as  it  is  lived  or  as  it  has  ever 

180 


NOVELS     AND     ROMANCES 

been  lived.    It  is  picturesque  invention  pure 
and   simple    (the   sort  of    thing    that    makes 
French  fairy  tales  such  pretty  reading,  and  that 
makes  them  in  the  end  so  empty  and  so  much 
inferior  to  the  fairy  tales  of  other  nations); 
and  except  that  men  love   a  lie  for  its  own 
sake  it  can  have  no  importance.     Until  the  lies 
(or  facts)   are  co-ordinated   and  organised  to 
make  a  whole,  to  support  each  other  by  the 
new  value  gained  by  their  disciplined  associa- 
tion, they  are  nothing  but  isolated  lies  or  facts. 
It  is  the  author's  brooding  imagination,  which 
is  in  direct  relation  to,  and  under  the  influence 
of,  his  own  a?sthetic  and  emotional  experience, 
that    supplies    that    fusion     and    transfusion 
which  makes   a  work  of  art.    Perfect  fusion 
makes  a  great  work  of  art,  such  as  we  may 
see  in  the  best  of  Turgeniev's  work;   imper- 
fect fusion  makes    an   inferior   work    of  art. 
But  there  can  be  no  fusion  without  a  basic 
idea,    a    unifying    idea.      And   that   unifying 
idea,  without  which  the  invention  and  imagi- 
nation of  scenes  remains  hopelessly  episodic, 
does  not   arise   in   Stevenson's  romances.     It 
shows  faintly  in  The  Ebb  Tide  and  The  Master 
of  Ballantrae,    where   both   books   are   tinged 
with  suggestions  of  a  moral  idea  ;    it  shows 
Stevenson  struggling  in  the  grip  of  Jekyll  and 
Hyde  in  the  book  which  bears  the  name  of 

181 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

those  forces  in  him.  The  one  (shall  we  say 
Mr.  Hyde  ?)  is  the  tendency  to  moralise,  to 
preach,  which  was  inherited  from  countless 
Scottish  ancestors  ;  the  other  is  the  impulse 
to  invent  (an  impulse  which  is  too  generally 
lauded  by  the  great  name  of  imagination). 
Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde,  dreamed  as  a  shocker, 
and  successful  as  a  shocker,  became  in  revision 
a  parable,  a  morality.  The  natural  Stevenson 
dreamed  a  shocker  ;  and  the  scribe  said,  "  Let 
us  be  moral !  "  And  that  is  Dr.  Jekyll  and 
Mr.  Hyde  as  we  have  it  in  its  bald  police-court 
narratives  and  letters.  Nearer  than  a  moral 
idea,  Stevenson  never  approached  our  philoso- 
phical basis.  Adventure  blurred  his  sight ; 
picturcsqueness  lured  him.  His  object  in 
writing  was  not  the  utterance  of  piercing 
thoughts  or  poignant  emotion  :  he  wrote 
because  of  his  long  Scots  tongue,  which  turned 
and  savoured  all  the  lively  incidents  which  his 
brain  conjured.  Excepting  in  The  Master  of 
Ballantrae,  where  our  hearts  are  made  to  leap, 
and  in  Weir  of  Her  mist  on,  which  stands  alone 
among  all  his  books,  are  we  ever  moved  by 
Stevenson's  romances  ?  We  are  stirred  by  the 
sense  of  an  open  road,  and  the  inviting  hills, 
and  furze  and  whin  that  is  good  cover  for  men 
crawling  upon  their  bellies.  We  have  the 
sense  that  a  sentry  is  round  the  curve  of  the 

182 


NOVELS     AND     ROMANCES 

hill ;    but  never  that  he  will  discover  as  and 
strike.      There    is    never    any    real    danger    in 
Stevenson's  books  ;    never  a  real  broken  heart 
or  a  real  heaven-high  splendour  of  joy.    There 
is  the  lure  of  the  road  and  the  heather  ;    but 
we  will  be  back  again  in  the  bright  warm  house, 
by   the   light   of  the  red  fire,  with  our  cigar 
and  whisky-and-soda  (for  it  seems  that  is  in- 
evitable) before  nightfall.     It  is  true  that  we 
shall  hear  the  sea,   and  the  coach's  winding 
horn,  and  some  faint  combing  of  the  bagpipes  ; 
and  perhaps  we  shall  see  the  lamplighter,  and 
have  had  scones  for  tea,  and  shall  read  Black- 
stone  or  some  old  Scots  history  before  we  go 
to  bed.    But  we  have  not  really  been  far  away  ; 
we  have  been  excited  and  pleased  and  happily 
warmed  by  the  day's  doings  in  the  open  air,  but 
we  have  never  seen  the  naked  soul  of  man,  or 
heard  the  haunting  music  of  the  syrens,  or  looked 
upon  the  open  face  of  God.    Nor  have  we  truly 
exercised  our  energy  in  some  less  conventional 
rapture  of  the  world's  wonder.     The  reason 
may  be  traced  back  to  our  author  :    it  is  not 
a  part  of  our  own  shortcomings.     Stevenson, 
in  his  romances,  played  with  his  inventions  ; 
and  he  played  sometimes  splendidly.    But  he 
had  not  the  vital  assurance,  the  fierce  trenchant 
fathoming  of  adventure  that  a  vigorous  man 
enjoys.     "  A  certain  warmth  (tepid  enough)," 

183 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

he  says,  "  and  a  certain  dash  of  the  picturesque 
are  my  poor  essential  qualities."  Well,  that 
is  a  modest  under-statement ;  but,  as  far  as 
the  historical  romances  go,  the  verdict  is  not 
wholly  astray.  It  is  in  the  latest  novels,  the 
realistic  novels,  that  Stevenson  rose  to  a  fuller 
stature  ;  that  was  because  in  the  last  years  of 
life  he  truly  for  the  first  time  was  able  to  taste 
the  actual  air  of  physical  danger.  He  had  been 
in  genuine  physical  danger  :  it  electrified  him. 
It  gave  him,  perhaps,  a  philosophy  that  was 
not  made  up  of  figured  casuistries.  It  enabled 
him  to  begin  Weir  of  Htrmision  with  something 
of  the  cold  freshness  of  running  water. 


184 


IX 

CONCLUSION 


If,  in  writing  such  a  book  as  this,  one  could 
truly  succeed  in  grasping  the  significance  of 
a  man's  work,  or  in  appreciating  the  bent  of 
his  mind  ;  and  then,  having  grasped  or  appre- 
ciated, if  one  could  convey  the  results  with 
any  precision,  the  book  would  have  a  signifi- 
cance beyond  that  of  literary  criticism.  Having 
"  drawed  a  man,"  as  Stevenson  once  did,  one 
might  indeed  go  on  to  "  draw  his  soul,"  as 
Stevenson  only  offered  to  do.  And  the  conse- 
quence might  be  that  one  would  throw  some 
light  upon  that  difficult  problem — the  psy- 
chology of  genius.  For  we  may  seek  deliber- 
ately now,  or,  if  deliberateness  seem  too 
dryasdust,  we  may  seek  intuitively,  to  under- 
stand the  way  in  which  such  a  man  as  Steven- 
son grew  up  to  be  a  successful  writer,  and  the 
aspects  in  which  the  art  of  writing  appeared 
to  at  least  one  of  its  exponents.  I  have  tried 
here  and  there  in  this  book  to  indicate  some- 

185 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

thing  of  the  spirit  in  which  Stevenson 
approached  his  art,  and  I  have  tried  also 
to  suggest  what  I  regard  as  the  particular 
strengths  and  shortcomings  of  Stevenson's 
talent.  But  however  one  may  interpret  the 
work  of  a  writer  there  must  always  be  the 
danger  that  in  pursuing  an  examination  such 
as  this  one  may  be  missing  the  very  significance 
of  which  one  is  in  search.  At  best,  one  can 
offer  only  tentatively  the  conclusions  to  be 
drawn  from  the  results  of  such  an  examina- 
tion. 

Much  has  been  written  of  Stevenson's  in- 
debtedness in  early  days  to  other  writers.  He 
has  committed  himself  to  the  suggestion  that 
he  coveted  the  power  of  writing  before  he  was 
aware  of  anything  that  he  particularly  wished 
to  write.  For  the  purpose  of  learning  to  write, 
he  claims  to  have  imitated  a  dozen  different 
authors,  assiduously  practising  until  he  had 
obtained  a  mastery  over  words.  My  own 
impression,  which  I  have  given  earlier,  is  that 
Stevenson's  sense  of  style  was  developed  by 
the  histrionic  gifts  of  his  nurse.  That  seems 
at  least  probable.  I  think  that  with  a  sense  of 
style,  a  habit  of  spinning  tales  (which  it  appears 
that  he  possessed,  in  common  with  many 
people  with  no  pretensions  to  literary  skill), 
and  a  desire  to  write  that  was  keen  enough  to 

186 


CONCLUSION 

be  a  hunger,  Stevenson  is  a  credible  figure  of 
youth.  There  must  be  many  youths  who  get 
so  far  and  go  no  further.  The  point  about 
Stevenson  is  that  he  went  on.  But  he  went  on 
as  he  began — as  a  writer,  one  who  was  deter- 
mined to  utilise  words.  Wherever  he  went  he 
took  the  little  notebook  of  which  he  has  given 
an  account ;  and  he  made  the  attempt  to  put 
everything  he  saw  into  words  which  expressed 
it  exactly.  The  reader  will  find  in  early  essays 
many  curiously  apt  descriptions  of  natural 
phenomena — such,  for  example,  as  "  the  faint 
and  choking  odour  of  frost  " — which  show 
that  when  once  Stevenson  began  to  write 
away  from  the  model  he  began  also  to  observe 
consciously  and  to  reproduce  his  sensations 
with  what  would  nowadays  be  called  "  a 
photographic  accuracy."  I  have  already 
quoted  two  such  accuracies  from  Treasure 
Island,  where  they  are  very  effective  ;  but  it 
would  be  hard  to  stop  quoting  Stevenson  if 
one  wished  to  record  apt  phrases,  for  apt 
phrases  are  as  common  with  Stevenson  as 
leaves  on  a  tree. 

What  the  reader  next  proceeds  to  question 
is  the  matter  which  the  writing  is  used  to 
convey.  Until  we  come  to  such  an  essay  as 
Ordered  South,  I  believe  there  is  very  little  life 
in  this  matter.    In  Roads  there  is  a  little  weak 

187 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

vanity,  as  of  fancy  paralysed  by  self-conscious- 
ness, such  as  one  may  often  see  in  the  work 
of  very  young  writers  ;  but  there  seems  no 
doubt  that,  by  1874,  a  year  after  the  composi- 
tion of  Roads,  Stevenson  had  reached  a  degree 
of  proficiency  which,  given  a  suitable  subject, 
enabled  him  to  escape  the  flaccidity  which 
besets  a  young  writer.  >J£overty  of  matter, 
which  forces  him  back  upon  incident  or  upon 
thin  moralising,  is,  throughout,  a  defect  of 
Stevenson's  writing.  I  suppose  that  the  method 
by  which  he  worked  was  too  "  near,"  too  self- 
conscious,  to  allow  his  mind  ever  to  become 
rich  and  fallow.  He  was  using  up  his  experi- 
ence too  immediately  and  too  continuously  as 
literary  material  for  any  very  great  richness  to 
mature.  He  is  never,  that  is  to  say,  a  rich 
writer  :  whatever  compression  there  is  in  his 
work  is  the  compression  that  comes  of  the 
excised  word  and  the  concentrated  phrase 
rather  than  the  pregnancy  of  thought,  whether 
vigorous  or  abstruse.  It  must  be  remembered 
that,  wherever  he  went,  his  journey  or  his 
place  of  residence  provided  him  almost  at  once 
with  a  practicable  background  for  literary 
work  of  some  sort.  His  travel  books,  his 
stories — these  all  show  immediately  the  stage 
of  his  life's  journey  to  which  they  belong. 
That  is  one  thing.  Another  is  that  his 
188 


CONCLUSION 

writing  is  very  clear.  It  is  a  model  in  its 
freedom  from  ambiguities.  If  clarity  is  a 
virtue  in  writing,  as  I  believe  it  to  be,  then 
Stevenson  deserves  praise  for  most  admirable 
clarity.  There  is  no  difficulty  of  style.  It  is 
easy  to  read,  because  it  has  so  much  grace  ; 
but  it  is  also  easy  to  understand,  because  it  is 
in  a  high  degree  explicit.  It  is  essentially  a 
prose  style  ;  as  I  think  Stevenson  was  essen- 
tially a  prose-writer.  His  poems  have  this 
same  clearness  (though  surely  he  was  never  a 
master  of  poetic  form  to  the  extent  to  which 
he  was  a  master  of  prose),  and  clearness  in 
poetry  is  a  less  notable  virtue  than  clearness 
in  prose.  Unless  poetry  expresses  something 
that  could  not  properly  be  expressed  in  prose 
it  clearly  has  no  claim  upon  our  attention. 
The  consequence  of  this  is  that  Stevenson,  who 
wrote  very  capable  verses,  does  not  impress 
us  as  a  poet.  Even  in  this  respect,  however, 
his  clearness  has  its  virtue  ;  because  the  mark 
of  the  ostentatiously  minor  poet  is  obscurity 
of  diction.  Stevenson  was  not  obscure  in 
diction,  and  he  was  not  obscure  in  thought,  as 
so  many  writers  with  little  to  say  are  obscure. 
He  went,  in  fact,  to  the  other  extreme.  His 
poems  are  too  explicit  to  be  good  poems.  They 
are  the  poems  of  a  man  with  all  his  wits  about 
him  ;     they    are    the    poems    of   a    man    who 

189 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

always  had  his  wits  about  him.  I  will  go  so 
far  as  to  say  that  a  man  who  always,  in  this 
common  but  expressive  phrase,  has  his  wits 
about  him  is  never  within  measurable  distance 
of  being  a  poet. 

If  Stevenson's  habitual  attitude  of  mind  be 
then  examined  it  will  prove  to  be  directly 
opposed  to  the  habit  of  mind  of  the  poet.  He 
was  about  as  poetic  as  a  robin.  But  his  habit 
of  mind  (unlike  that  of  the  robin)  was  moral 
as  well  as  practical.  It  was  not  philosophical  ; 
nor  would  one  willingly  use  in  this  connection 
the  word  spiritual.  It  was  moral  and  practical  ; 
it  was  fundamentally  a  prose  habit  of  mind. 
The  highest  and  the  lowest  were  alike  strange 
to  Stevenson's  mind  ;  it  had  excellent  equi- 
poise, an  admirable  sanity.  It  had  not, 
normally,  a  very  wide  range  of  sympathy  or 
interest.  I  have  explained  this — or  rather,  I 
have  tried  to  explain  it — to  some  extent  in 
earlier  chapters  ;  but  in  this  place  an  explana- 
tion may  be  more  clearly  offered.  Stevenson, 
we  know,  was  an  invalid  ;  his  vitality  was 
poor,  although  the  poverty  of  his  vitality  was 
partly  concealed  by  a  buoyancy  of  nervous 
high  spirits.  The  tendency  of  all  natures  is  to 
adjust  the  indulgence  of  emotion  to  the  power 
of  withstanding  the  reaction  from  such  emotion. 
Highly    emotional    natures,    unless    they    are 

190 


CONCLUSION 

morbid,    seek  instinctively   to   avoid   the   ex- 
haustion which  overstrained  emotion  produces. 
Delicate    persons    instinctively    avoid    mental 
exertion — not  from  lack  of  courage,   or  even 
from  lack  of  intellectual  strength  ;    but  purely 
from    lassitude    and    the    dread    of   lassitude. 
They  do  not  essay  long  or  vehement  excursions 
from  their  base  of  common-sense  ;    they  must 
always  be  able  to  return  the  same  night.    That 
is  because  sustained  imaginative  effort,  as  well 
as  poignant  emotion,  is  instinctively  recognised 
as  dangerous.     It  is  not  that  they  lack  the 
power   to    imagine    or   to   feel   deeply  ;     it    is 
simply  that,  as  a  measure  for  their  own  pro- 
tection, they  rely  upon  the  virtues  which  are 
less   intense   and   less   exacting.      They   grow 
cautious.     Stevenson  was  cautious.  [_  To  him 
God  was  a  kindly,  well-intentioned  person  of 
infinite   mercy  ;     but   He   was   not   a   terrible 
God,    nor   a    God    in   Whom   there    was   any 
mystery.    If  one  had  used  the  word  "  mystery  " 
to  Stevenson  he  would  have  thought  inevitably 
of  Gaboriau.    I  should  explain  that  by  suggest- 
ing— not  that  Stevenson  was  what  is  called 
"unimaginative,"  but  that  his  delicate  body 
provoked  the  compromise.    Otherwise  he  might 
have  been  a  fanatic.     Perhaps  I  am  wrong  ; 
perhaps    there    was    simply    nothing    of    the 
mystic  in  Stevenson,   and  perhaps  there  was 

191 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

nothing  of  the  mystic  in  Alison  Cunningham. 
It  is  true  that  Stevenson's  early  wrestlings 
with  religious  difficulties  seem  to  have  led  him 
to  conclusions  strictly  utilitarian,  by  which 
Christianity  became  a  "  body  of  doctrine  " 
rather  than  a  cloud  of  witnesses.  Nevertheless, 
I  am  disposed  to  think  that  his  apparent 
failure  to  apprehend  any  faith  more  exacting 
than  a  lucid  morality  or  ethical  code  was 
caused  throughout  by  physical  weakness. 

The  point  is  interesting  rather  than  con- 
clusive ;  and  it  may  be  thought  that  Steven- 
son's attitude  to  his  art  tells  strongly  against 
my  hypothesis.  He  was  essentially  technical 
in  his  attitude  to  style  and  to  art  in  general. 
He  did  not  regard  writing  as  a  means  of  ex- 
pressing truths  ;  he  seems  to  have  regarded  it 
as  an  end  in  itself.  He  does  not  seem  to  con- 
sider the  notion  of  writing  to  express  an  idea  ; 
his  impulse  is  to  gather  together  as  many 
incidents  as  will  make  a  book.  It  is  easy,  of 
course,  to  take  an  unsophisticated  view  of  art, 
and  pretend  that  the  artist  invariably  works 
with  the  aid  of  an  inner  light.  I  do  not  wish 
to  pretend  that  the  artist  is  such  a  mere 
instrument ;  particularly  as  the  writer  who 
claims  to  be  no  more  than  a  medium  is  gener- 
ally no  less  than  a  charlatan.  But  I  cannot 
help  remarking  how  entirely  absent  from  any 

192 


CONCLUSION 

declaration  by  Stevenson  is  the  sense  of  an 
artist's  profound  disinterested  imagining.  So 
far  from  being  profoundly  disinterested,  he 
seems  to  have  followed  here  the  custom  he 
admits  following  in  childhood,  that  of  reading 
and  watching  everything  for  the  sake  of 
wrinkles  subsequently  to  be  used  in  play.  It 
seems  as  though  he  took  imaginative  writing 
at  its  lowest  valuation,  as  so  much  "  fake," 
as  so  much  invention  very  ingeniously  con- 
trived but  never  really,  in  the  last  resort, 
perfectly  believed  by  the  creator — as,  in  fact, 
something  "  pretended."  Now  Stevenson's 
practice,  in  that  case,  is  better  than  his  theory. 
Scenes  in  his  romances,  and  some  of  his  short 
stories  in  bulk,  are  the  work  of  an  artist  who 
was  working  at  the  bidding  of  his  inspiration. 
Stevenson  did,  at  these  times,  believe  as  an 
artist  in  the  work  he  was  making.  I  can  give 
no  account  of  the  artist's  state  of  mind  ;  but 
it  is  quite  certain  that  Stevenson  did  not 
"  pretend  "  his  best  work,  and  that  no  artist 
"  pretends "  his  best  work.  An  artist  can 
distinguish  between  that  part  of  his  work 
which  is  the  result  of  intense  belief  and  that 
part  which  is  agnostic.  Stevenson  seems  not 
to  have  been  so  sure  ;  for  his  aims,  whether 
they  are  at  "  vitality  "  or  at  the  death  of  the 
optic  nerve  and  the  adjective,  suggest  that  he 
N  193 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

invariably  adopted  the  attitude  of  the  crafts- 
man, the  professional  writer  of  novels  for 
popular  consumption.  Even  so,  he  is  to  be 
applauded  for  his  freedom  from  artistic  cant. 
If  he  is  too  intent  upon  rattling  the  bones,  at 
least  that  is  more  candid  than  the  habit  of 
playing  the  priest. 

ii 
From  this  question  of  Stevenson's  conviction, 
however  (the  question  of  the  inevitable  as 
opposed  to  the  practicable),  arises  a  further 
question.  I  have  said  earlier  that  in  the  case 
of  a  work  of  art  there  is  left  with  the  reader 
some  abiding  emotion,  an  evocation,  as  it 
were,  of  emotion  distinct  from  all  incidental 
emotions,  excitements,  dreads,  or  anxieties 
aroused  in  the  course  of  the  book.  In  that 
pervading  and  prevailing  emotion,  it  seems  to 
me,  lies  the  particular  quality  which  distin- 
guishes a  work  of  art  from  a  work  of  merely 
consummate  craft.  If  I  question  whether  such 
abiding  emotion  is  evoked  by  the  longer  stories 
of  Stevenson,  I  am  bound  to  answer  that  these 
do  not  arouse  in  me  any  emotion  greater  than 
that  of  interest,  the  consequence  of  a  succession 
of  pleasant  excitements.  The  romances  as  a 
whole  have  great  ingenuity,  many  scenes  to 
which  all  readers  must  look  back  with  recol- 

194 


CONCLUSION 

lected  enjoyment.  In  no  case  does  the  book 
reappear  as  a  whole.  The  recollection  is  a 
recollection  of  "  plums."  That  they  are  good 
plums  does  not  affect  the  validity  of  the  argu- 
ment if  once  the  specific  test  suggested  above 
is  accepted.  In  the  case  of  Weir  of  Hermiston 
the  recollection  is  obviously  difficult,  because 
the  book  is  a  fragment  :  it  is,  however,  per- 
fectly clear  and  level  in  performance,  which 
leads  to  the  supposition  that  Weir,  as  it  stands, 
will  actually  bear  whatever  test  is  applied  to 
it.  For  that  reason  Weir  is  truly  regarded  as 
Stevenson's  masterpiece  among  the  longer 
stories. 

With  the  short  stories  I  have  already  dealt 
in  considerable  detail ;  to  the  remaining 
creative  works  there  is  no  need  to  refer  on 
these  grounds,  for  the  plays  are  admittedly 
poor.  And  indeed,  I  should  not  have  raised 
the  question  about  the  romances  if  it  had  not 
been  the  case  that  very  considerable  claims 
have  been  made  on  behalf  of  the  permanent 
value  of  Stevenson's  work  by  many  writers 
whose  opinions  ordinarily  command  respect. 
The  truth  is  probably  that  all  good  novels,  of 
whatever  kind,  whether  modern  or  historical, 
must  be  based  upon  idea  and  upon  character. 
To  Stevenson,  character  was  incidental.  To 
Stevenson   incident,    picturesque   or   exciting, 

195 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

and  the  employment  of  an  atmosphere,  or 
appropriate  "  style,"  were  the  most  important 
things  in  romance.  That  was  perhaps  the 
grave  mistake  which  made  his  romances  what 
they  are,  and  which  has  very  considerably 
affected  the  romantic  novels  published  since 
Stevenson's  time  and  written  in  accordance  with 
his  conventions.  The  use  of  conventional 
characters,  easily-recognisable  romantic  types, 
has  for  twenty  years  and  more  been  accepted 
by  English  romantic  novelists  as  a  legitimate 
evasion  of  the  need  for  creating  character. 
Thus  it  happens  that  so  few  modern  romantic 
novels  have  at  this  time  any  standing.  Their 
names  are  forgotten  (except,  possibly,  by  their 
authors,  and  by  some  sections  of  the  public 
only  if  the  novels  have  been  made  into  stage 
plays).  If  Stevenson's  romances  had  enjoyed 
the  strength  of  definite  themes,  and  if  they 
had  been  based  upon  character,  the  whole 
position  of  the  romantic  novel  in  England  at 
the  present  day  might  have  been  different. 
As  it  is,  the  romantic  novel  is  a  survival. 
The  freshness  of  Stevenson's  manipulated  con- 
vention is  stale,  and  the  imitators  of  Stevenson 
have  forsaken  romance  for  the  writing  of 
detective  mystery  stories.  They  still  have 
popularity  :    but  they  have  no  status. 


196 


CONCLUSION 


in 

But  it  may  be  urged  that  Stevenson  saved 
his  ideas  for  that  more  direct  appeal  to  readers 
which  is  the  special  privilege  of  the  essay. 
Now  the  point  in  this  case  is  to  be  reached  by 
the  inquiry  as  to  what  ideas  Stevenson  ex- 
pressed in  his  essays.  They  are  very  simple. 
Stevenson's  essays  are  either  fanciful  treat- 
ments of  pleasant,  or  attractive,  or  ingenious 
notions ;  or  they  are  frankly  homiletic. 
Stevenson  loved  courage,  and  he  thought  that 
courage  should  have  trappings.  To  his  mind 
the  bravest  actions  were  the  better  for  a  bit  of 
purple.  But  when  we  penetrate  beyond  this 
crust  of  happy  truism  there  is  little  that  will 
reward  us  for  the  search.  There  is  no  thought, 
and  little  enough  feeling  in  the  essays  :  their 
charm  lies  in  the  fact  that  they  dress  prettily, 
and  sometimes  beautifully,  the  rather  obvious 
philosophical  small-change  which  most  people 
cherish  as  their  private  wisdom.  The  essays 
flatter  the  reader  by  mirroring  his  own  mind 
and  giving  it  an  odd  twist  of  grace.  They  are 
shrewd  mother- wit,  dressed  for  a  fairing.  That 
is  what  causes  the  popularity  of  the  essays — 
that  and  the  air  they  have  of  "  looking  on  the 
bright  side  of  things."  They  do  look  on  the 
bright  side  ;   they  are  homely,  cheerful,  charm- 

197 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

ing ;  they  will  continue  to  adorn  the  book- 
shelf with  a  pretty,  pale,  bedside  cheerfulness 
which  will  delight  all  whose  culture  exceeds 
their  originality.  But  I  believe  that  they 
have  ceased  to  be  regarded  (it  has  almost 
become  ridiculous  that  they  should  ever  have 
been  regarded)  as  comparable  with  the  essays 
of  Montaigne,  or  Hazlitt,  or  Lamb  ;  because 
their  day  is  sinking  and  their  fragility  is  seen 
already  to  indicate  a  want  of  robustness  rather 
than  a  delicacy  of  perception.  By  this  I  do 
not  mean  to  suggest  that  already  the  essays 
are  out  of  date  :  they  are  only  out  of  date  in 
some  instances,  and  even  if  they  were  com- 
pletely out  of  date  that  fact  would  not  have 
much  ultimate  critical  significance.  What  is, 
however,  very  significant,  is  that  they  have 
ceased  to  stand  as  essays,  and  have  become 
goods  for  the  monger  of  phrases.  Their 
"  aptness/'  which  of  old  was  the  charm  that 
dignified  the  trite  moralism,  has  recoiled 
upon  them  :  they  are  seen  to  be  mere  aggre- 
gations of  "  happy  thoughts,1'  fit  to  be  culled 
and  calendared  for  suburban  households.  It 
is  not  without  its  pathos  that  one  warning 
against  too-eager  judgment  of  weaker  brethren, 
really  written  by  an  American  woman  poet,  is 
widelv  and  steadfastly  attributed  to  Stevenson 
by  his  greatest  admirers.    For  the  teaching  of 

198 


CONCLUSION 

the  essays  is  one  of  compromise,  not  of  enlarged 
ideals  ;  it  is  the  doctrine  of  "  that  state  of 
life  "  which  finally  ends  in  a  good-natured 
passivity  not  unlike  the  happy  innocence  of 
the  domesticated  cat.  Thus,  for  all  his 
powerful  desire  to  preach,  Stevenson  taught 
nothing  but  a  bland  acquiescence  ;  for  the 
field  of  battle  to  which  he  likened  marriage  as 
well  as  life  was  a  field  in  which  there  was  no 
headstrong  conflict  of  ideal  and  practice,  but 
a  mere  accommodation  which  a  phrase  could 
embody. 

IV 

There  seems  to  be  a  general  tendency  to 
protest  against  such  opinions,  not  because  the 
opinions  are  adequately  countered,  but  because 
in  most  readers  Stevenson  produces  a  vague 
doting  which  is  entirely  uncritical.  Stevenson 
in  such  warm  hearts  is  incomparable  ;  and  a 
question  is  a  perceptible  rebuff  to  their  confid- 
ingness.  The  prevailing  feeling  appears  to  be 
one  of  affectionate  admiration,  a  matter  of 
personal  attraction  rather  than  of  critical 
esteem.  Such  a  claim  in  any  man  is  very  far 
from  being  negligible.  It  is  clear  that  the  need 
of  most  people  is  an  object  of  affection.  They 
must  love,  or  they  cannot  appreciate.  The 
modern  school  of  novelists,  which  tries  to  be 

199 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

very  stern  and  almost  legally  unjust,  provides 
little  enough  material  for  the  loving  hearts. 
The  modern  school  says  to  its  readers  :  "  You 
are  wicked,  selfish,  diseased,  but  horribly 
fascinating,  and  I'm  going  to  set  you  right  by 
diagnosis  "  ;  and  the  reader  feels  a  sting  in  the 
fascination.  Stevenson  says,  "  We  are  all 
mighty  fine  fellows  ;  and  life  is  a  field  of 
battle  ;  but  it  is  better  to  be  a  fool  than  to  be 
dead  ;  and  the  true  success  is  to  labour  "  ; 
and  the  reader  feels  that  Stevenson  is  One  of  Us  ! 
He  is  not,  that  is  to  say,  austere  ;  he  does  not 
ask  uncomfortable  questions  ;  he  makes  no 
claim  upon  his  readers'  judgment,  but  only 
upon  their  self-esteem  and  their  gratified 
assent.  He  even  tells  them  about  himself. 
He  says,  "  I  knew  a  little  boy  "  ;  and  his 
readers  say:  "It's  himself!"  They  read 
with  enormous  satisfaction. 

Well,  all  that  is  delightful ;  but  in  its  way 
it  is  a  red-herring.  It  does  not  help  us  to 
assay  the  literary  value  of  Stevenson's  work. 
It  is  simply  a  wide  illustration  of  the  fascination 
which  Stevenson  had  for  his  friends.  It  is  an 
extension  of  that  rare  thing,  personal  charm. 
We  may  say  that  it  ought  not  to  influence 
readers  ;  and  no  doubt  it  influences  some  too- 
critical  readers  adversely  (criticism  being 
understood  by  all  admirers  of  Stevenson  as 

200 


CONCLUSION 

the  merest  corrosion) ;  but  the  fact  is  that  it 
cannot  be  ignored  by  anyone  who  seeks  to 
account  for  Stevenson's  continued,  and  even 
now  barely  declining,  popularity.  Another 
very  good  reason  is  that  Stevenson  had  extra- 
ordinarily good  friends.  I  think  it  probable 
that  no  writer  ever  had  friends  more  loyal  and 
affectionate.  They  criticised  his  work  privately 
to  its  great  improvement,  and  then  sold  his 
work  when  it  was  completed,  acting  as  coun- 
sellors and  agents.  And  this  was  done  with 
the  same  affectionate  admiration  which  readers 
of  his  work  still  feel.  He  had  few  intimate 
friends,  says  Mrs.  Stevenson  :  if  friendship 
consisted  in  affection  received  (as  distin- 
guished from  affection  exchanged),  I  think 
Stevenson  would  have  been  in  friends  the 
richest  man  of  his  own  generation.  And  since 
his  death  he  has  found  a  hundred  thousand 
friends  for  every  one  he  had  during  his  life- 
time. No  man  was  ever  richer  in  well-wishers. 
If  he  had  few  intimate  friends  that  was  because 
he  was  naturally  reserved,  or,  as  Mrs.  Strong 
says,  "  secretive."  No  doubt  it  was  a  part  of 
his  charm  that  his  friends  were  mystified  by 
his  reserve  :  I  do  not  see  why  his  readers  also 
should  be  mystified,  for  his  writing  is  free  of 
any  mystery.  I  can  only  assume  that  a  slight 
air    of    sentimentalism    which    runs    through 

201 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

essays  and  romances  alike,  and  over  into  such 
short  stories  as  Will  o'  the  Mill  and  Markheim, 
combines  with  the  thin  optimism  of  the  essays 
and  the  picturesque  variety  of  incident  of  the 
romances  to  give  body  to  this  charm.  I  have 
stated  in  an  earlier  chapter  the  features  of  the 
romances  which  seem  to  me  to  be  merits  :  it 
is  not  necessary  to  repeat  the  merits  here. 
They  include  occasional  pieces  of  distinguished 
imagination,  a  frequent  exuberance  of  fancy, 
and  a  great  freshness  of  incident  which  con- 
ceals lack  of  central  or  unifying  idea  and 
poverty  of  imagined  character.  Intrinsically, 
although  their  literary  quality  is  much  higher, 
the  romances — with  the  possible  exception  of 
Kidnapped — are  inferior  to  the  work  of  Captain 
Marry  at. 


Finally,  the  fact  which  all  must  recognise  in 
connection  with  Stevenson's  work  is  the 
versatility  of  talent  which  is  displayed. 
From  essays  personal  to  essays  critical ;  from 
short-stories  picturesque  to  short-stories  meta- 
physical, and  stories  of  bogles  to  fairy  stories 
of  princes  and  magic  bottles  and  wondrous 
enchanted  isles  ;  from  tales  of  treasure  to  the 
politics  of  a  principality,  from  Scottish  history 
to  tales  of  the  South  Seas  ;    from  travel  books 

202 


CONCLUSION 

to  poems  for  men  and  children ;  from  the 
thermal  influences  of  forests  to  a  defence  of  a 
Roman  Catholic  hero-priest  ;  from  Samoan 
politics  to  the  story  of  the  Justice  Clerk  ;  from 
plays  to  topographical  history  and  imaginary 
war-news  and  the  cutting  of  wood-blocks  (to 
the  satisfaction  of  Mr.  Joseph  Pennell) — that 
is  a  dazzling  record.  Quite  obviously  one 
cannot  contemplate  it  without  great  admira- 
tion. When  it  is  remembered  also  that  it  is 
the  product  of  a  man  who  was  very  frequently 
(though  not.  as  is  generally  supposed,  continu- 
ously) an  invalid,  the  amount  of  it,  and  the 
variety,  seems  to  be  impossible.  Yet  it  is 
possible,  and  this  fact  it  is  which  finally 
explains  our  attitude  to  Stevenson.  We  think 
it  marvellous  that  he  should  have  been  able 
to  write  at  all,  forgetting,  as  we  do,  that 
"  writing  his  best  was  very  life  to  him."  We 
do  forget  that  ;  we  ought  not  to  forget  it.  We 
ought  not  to  forget  that  Stevenson  was  a 
writer.  He  meant  to  be  a  writer,  and  a  writer 
he  became.  He  is  known  chiefly  in  these  days 
as  a  writer  ;  and  in  the  future  he  will  be  still 
more  clearly  seen  as  a  writer.  The  weaknesses 
of  his  work  will  be  realised  ;  to  some  extent 
his  writing  will  fall  in  popular  esteem  ;  but  he 
will  be  less  the  brave  soul  travelling  hopefully 
and  labouring  to  arrive,  and  more  the  deliberate 

203 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

writer.  When  other  men  sing  and  walk  and 
talk  and  play  chess  and  loiter,  Stevenson 
wrote.  In  his  life  there  is  no  question  that  he 
sang  and  walked  and  loitered  and  talked  and 
played  chess  ;  but  when  he  could  do  none  of 
these  things  he  could  write.  Writing  was  as 
the  breath  of  his  body  ;  writing  was  his  health, 
his  friends,  his  romance.  He  will  go  down  into 
literary  history  as  the  man  who  became  a 
professional  writer,  who  cared  greatly  about 
the  form  and  forms  of  expression.  The  fact 
that  he  concentrated  upon  expression  left  his 
mind  to  some  extent  undeveloped,  so  that  he 
could  express  very  excellently  perceptions 
more  suitable  to  his  youth  than  to  his  maturer 
years.  It  made  his  earlier  writing  too  scented 
and  velvet-coated.  But  it  enabled  him,  when 
his  feeling  was  aroused,  as  it  only  could  have 
been  in  the  last  years  of  his  life,  to  write  at 
great  speed,  with  great  clearness,  an  account 
of  the  political  troubles  in  Samoa  and  in 
particular  of  German  diplomacy  there,  which 
seems  to  us  still  valuable — not  because  the 
facts  it  records  are  of  extreme  significance,  but 
because  at  the  end  of  his  life  Stevenson  was  at 
last  to  be  found  basing  his  work  upon  prin- 
ciples, really  and  consciously  grasped,  from 
which  the  incidental  outcome  was  of  less  im- 
portance than  the  main  realisation.    Where  he 

204 


CONCLUSION 

had  hitherto  been  shuttlecocked  by  his  im- 
pulses, and  tethered  by  his  moralism,  he  became 
capable  of  appreciating  ideas  as  of  more 
importance  than  their  expression.  If  he  had 
been  less  prolific,  less  versatile,  less  of  a 
virtuoso,  Stevenson  might  have  been  a  greater 
man.  He  would  have  been  less  popular.  He 
would  have  been  less  generally  admired  and 
loved.  But  with  all  his  writing  he  took  the 
road  of  least  resistance,  the  road  of  limited 
horizons ;  because  with  all  his  desire  for 
romance,  his  desire  for  the  splendour  of  the 
great  life  of  action,  he  was  by  physical  delicacy 
made  intellectually  timid  and  spiritually 
cautious.  He  was  obliged  to  take  care  of 
himself,  to  be  home  at  night,  to  allow  himself 
to  be  looked  after.  Was  not  that  the  greatest 
misfortune  that  could  have  befallen  him  ? 
Is  the  work  that  is  produced  by  nervous 
reaction  from  prudence  ever  likely  to  enjoy 
an  air  of  real  vitality  ?  In  the  versatility  of 
Stevenson  we  may  observe  his  restlessness, 
the  nervous  fluttering  of  the  mind  which  has 
no  physical  health  to  nourish  it.  In  that,  at 
least,  and  the  charming  and  not  at  all  objection- 
able inclination  to  pose.  He  was  a  poseur 
because  if  he  had  not  pretended  he  would  have 
died.  It  was  absolutely  essential  to  him  that 
he  should  pose  and  that  he  should  write,  just 

205 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

as  it  was  essential  that  he  should  be  flattered 
and  anxiously  guarded  from  chill  and  harm. 
But  it  was  necessary  for  the  same  reason,  lest 
the  feeble  flame  should  perish  and  the  eager 
flicker  of  nervous  exuberance  be  extinguished. 
That  Stevenson  was  deliberately  brave  in  being 
cheerful  and  fanciful  I  do  not  for  one  moment 
believe  ;  I  think  such  a  notion  is  the  result  of 
pure  ignorance  of  nervous  persons  and  their 
manifestations.  But  that  Stevenson,  beneath 
all  his  vanity,  realised  his  own  disabilities, 
seems  to  me  to  be  certain  and  pathetic.  That 
is  what  makes  so  much  of  the  extravagant 
nonsense  written  and  thought  about  Stevenson 
since  his  death  as  horrible  to  contemplate  as 
would  be  any  dance  of  ghouls.  The  authors  of 
all  this  posthumous  gloating  over  Stevenson's 
illnesses  have  been  concerned  to  make  him  a 
horribly  piteous  figure,  to  harrow  us  in  order 
that  we  should  pity.  How  much  more  is 
Stevenson  to  be  pitied  for  his  self-constituted 
apostles  !  We  shall  do  ill  to  pity  Stevenson, 
because  pity  is  the  obverse  of  envy,  and  is  as 
much  a  vice.  Let  us  rather  praise  Stevenson 
for  his  real  determination  and  for  that  work 
of  his  which  we  can  approve  as  well  as  love. 
To  love  uncritically  is  to  love  ill.  To  dis- 
criminate with  mercy  is  very  humbly  to 
justify  one's  privilege  as  a  reader. 

206 


CONCLUSION 


VI 

It  is  sufficient  here  to  maintain  that  Steven- 
son's literary  reputation,  as  distinct  from  the 
humanitarian  aspect  of  his  fortitude,  is 
seriously  impaired.  It  is  no  longer  possible 
for  a  serious  critic  to  place  him  among  the 
great  writers,  because  in  no  department  of 
letters — excepting  the  boy's  book  and  the 
short-story  —  has  he  written  work  of  first- 
class  importance.  His  plays,  his  poems,  his 
essays,  his  romances — all  are  seen  nowadays 
to  be  consumptive,  ^liat  remains  to  us, 
apart  from  a  fragment,  a  handful  of  tales,  and 
two  boy's  books  (for  Kidnapped,  although 
finely  romantic,  was  addressed  to  boys,  and 
still  appeals  to  the  boy  in  us)  is  a  series  of  fine 
scenes — what  I  have  called  "  plums  " — and 
the  charm  of  Stevenson's  personality.  Charm 
as  an  adjunct  is  very  well ;  charm  as  an  asset 
is  of  less  significance.  We  find  that  Stevenson, 
reviving  the  never-very-prosperous  romance  of 
England,  created  a  school  which  has  brought 
romance  to  be  the  sweepings  of  an  old  costume- 
chest.  I  am  afraid  we  must  admit  that 
Stevenson  has  become  admittedly  a  writer  of 
the  second  class,  because  his  ideals  have  been 
superseded  by  other  ideals  and  shown  to  be 
the  ideals  of  a  day,  a  season,  and  not  the  ideals 

207 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

of  an  age.  In  fact,  we  may  even  question 
whether  his  ideals  were  those  of  a  day,  whether 
they  were  not  merely  treated  by  everybody  as 
so  much  pastime  ;  whether  the  revival  of  the 
pernicious  notion  that  literature  is  only  a 
pastime  is  not  due  to  his  influence.  We  may 
question  whether  Stevenson  did  not  make  the 
novel  a  toy  when  George  Eliot  had  finished 
making  it  a  treatise.  If  that  charge  could  be 
upheld,  I  am  afraid  we  should  have  another 
deluge  of  critical  articles  upon  Stevenson, 
written  as  blindly  as  the  old  deluge,  but  this 
time  denouncing  him  as  a  positive  hindrance  in 
the  way  of  the  novel's  progress.  However  that 
may  be,  Stevenson  seems  very  decidedly  to 
have  betrayed  the  romantics  by  inducing  them 
to  enter  a  cul-de-sac  ;  for  romantic  literature 
in  England  at  the  present  time  seems  to  show 
no  inner  light,  but  only  a  suspicious  phos- 
phorescence. And  that  fact  we  may  quite 
clearly  trace  back  to  Stevenson,  who  galvanised 
romance  into  life  after  Charles  Reade  had 
volubly  betrayed  it  to  the  over-zealous  com- 
positor. 

Stevenson,  that  is  to  say,  was  not  an 
innovator.  We  can  find  his  originals  in  Wilkie 
Collins,  in  Scott,  in  Mayne  Reid,  in  Montaigne, 
Hazlitt,  Defoe,  Sterne,  and  in  many  others. 
No   need   for   him   to   admit   it  :     the   fact   is 

208 


CONCLUSION 

patent.  "  It  is  the  grown  people  who  make 
the  nursery  stories  ;  all  the  children  do,  is 
jealously  to  preserve  the  text."  That  is  what 
Stevenson  was  doing  ;  that  is  what  Stevenson's 
imitators  have  been  doing  ever  since.  And  if 
romance  rests  upon  no  better  base  than  this, 
if  romance  is  to  be  conventional  in  a  double 
sense,  if  it  spring  not  from  a  personal  vision  of 
life,  but  is  only  a  tedious  virtuosity,  a  pretence, 
a  conscious  toy,  romance  as  an  art  is  dead. 
The  art  was  jaded  when  Reade  finished  his 
vociferous  carpet-beating  ;  but  it  was  not  dead. 
And  if  it  is  dead,  Stevenson  killed  it. 


209 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

(The  dates  within  brackets  are  those  of  composition  or  of  first 
periodical  publication.) 

The  Pentland  Rising,  1866. 

A  New  Form  of  Intermittent  Light,  1871. 

The  Thermal  Influence  of  Forests,  1873. 

An  Appeal  to  the  Clergy  of  the  Church  of  Scotland,  1875. 

An  Inland  Voyage,  1878. 

Edinburgh  :   Picturesque  Notes,  1879. 

Travels  with  a  Donkey,  1879. 

Virginibus  Puerisque,  1881. 

Virginibus  Puerisque  :  four  parts  (1876-1S79)  ;  Crabbed 
Age  and  Youth  (1S73)  ;  An  Apology  for  Idlers  (1877)  ;  Ordered 
South  (1874)  ;  JEs  Triplex  (1S78)  ;  El  Dorado  (1878)  ;  The 
English  Admirals  (1S78)  ;  Some  Portraits  by  Raeburn  ;  Child's 
Play  (1878);  Walking  Tours  (1S76)  ;  Pan's  Pipes  (1878);  A 
Plea  for  Gas  Lamps  (1878). 

Familiar  Studies  of  Men  and  Books,  1882. 

Victor  Hugo's  Romances  (1874)  ;  Some  Aspects  of  Robert 
Burns  (1879)  ;  Walt  Whitman  (187S)  ;  Henry  David  Thoreau 
(1S80)  ;  Yoshida  Torajiro  (18S0)  ;  Francois  Villon  (1877)  ; 
Charles  of  Orleans  (1876)  ;  Samuel  Pepys  (1881)  ;  John  Knox, 
and  his  Relations  to  Women  (1875). 

New  Arabian  Nights,  1882. 

The  Suicide  Club  and  the  Rajah's  Diamond  (1878);  The 
Pavilion  on  the  Links  (1880)  ;  A  Lodging  for  the  Night  (1877)  ; 
The  Sire  de  Maletroit's  Door  (187S)  ;  Providence  and  the 
Guitar  (1878) 

The  Silverado  Squatters,  1883. 

213 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

Treasure  Island,  1883. 

Prince  Otto,  1885. 

A  Child's  Garden  of  Verses,  1885. 

The  Dynamiter,  1885. 

Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde,  1886. 

Kidnapped,  1886. 

The  Merry  Men,  1887. 

The  Merry  Men  (1882) ;  Will  o'  the  Mill  (1878)  ;  Markheim 
(1885};  Thrawn  Janet  (1881);  Olalla  (1S85)  ;  The  Treasure 
i  !  Franchard  (1883).  m^m' 

Memories  and  Portraits,  1887. 

The  Foreigner  at  Home  (1882)  ;  Some  College  Memories 
(1886);  Old  Mortality  (1884);  A  College  Magazine;  An  Old 
Scotch  Gardener  (1S71)  ;  Pastoral  (1887)  ;  The  Manse  (1887)  ; 
Memoirs  of  an  Islet;  Thomas  Stevenson  (1887);  Talk  and 
Talkers  (1882);  The  Character  of  Dogs  (1883);  "A  Penny 
Plain  and  Twopence  Coloured  "  (1884)  ;  A  Gossip  on  A  Novel 
of  Duraas's  ;  A  Gossip  on  Pvomance  (1882)  ;  A  Humble  Re- 
monstrance (1884). 

Underwoods,  1887. 

Memoir  of  Flceming  Jenkin  (in   "Papers  Literary, 

Scientific,  etc.,"  by  Fleeming  Jenkin),  1887. 
The  Black  Arrow,  18S8. 
The  Master  of  Ballantrae,  1889. 
The  Wrong  Box,  1889. 
Father  Damien,  1890. 
Ballads,  1890. 
Across  the  Plains,  1892. 

Across  the  Plains  (18S3)  ;  The  Old  Pacific  Capital  (1880)  ; 
Fontainebleau  (1884);  Epilogue  to  "An  Inland  Voyage" 
(1888);  The  Coast  of  Fife  (1888);  The  Education  of  an 
Engineer  (1888)  ;  The  Lantern  Bearers  (1888) ;  A  Chapter  on 
Dreams  (1888) ;  Beggars  (1888)  ;  Letter  to  a  Young  Gentleman 
(1888) ;  Pulvis  et  Umbra  (1888) ;  A  Christmas  Sermon  (1888). 

214 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The  Wrecker,  1892. 

A  Footnote  to  History,  1892. 

Three  Plays,  1892. 

Deacon  Brodie  (1880)  ;  Beau  Austin  (18S4)  ;  Admiral 
Guinea  (1884). 

Island  Nights  Entertainments,  1893. 

The  Beach  of  Falesa  (1892)  ;  The  Bottle  Imp  (1891)  ;  The 
Isle  of  Voices  (1893). 

Catriona,  1893. 

The  Ebb  Tide,  1894. 

Vailima  Letters,  1895. 

[Dr.  Jehjll  and  Mr.  Hyde  and]  Fables,  1896. 

Weir  of  Hermiston,  1896. 

Songs  of  Travel,  1896. 

A  Mountain  Town  in  France,  1896. 

Four  Plays,  1896. 

Deacon  Brodie  ;  Beau  Austin  ;  Admiral  Guinea  ;  Macaire 
(1885). 

St  Ives,  1898. 

Letters  to  His  Family  and  Friends,  1899. 

In  the  South  Seas,  1900. 

The  Pocket  R.  L.  S.  (containing  "  Prayers  "),  1902. 

Essays  in  the  Art  of  Writing,  1905. 

On  Some  Technical  Elements  of  Style  in  Literature  (1885)  ; 
The  Morality  of  the  Profession  of  Letters  (1881)  ;  Books  which 
have  Influenced  Me  (1887);  A  Note  on  Realism  (1883)  ;  My 
First  Book:  Treasure  Island  (1894);  The  Genesis  of  "The 
Master  of  Ballantrae  "  (1890) ;  Preface  to  "  The  Master  of 
Ballantrae  "  (1889). 

Tales  and  Fantasies,  1905. 

The  Misadventures  of  John  Nicholson  (1887)  ;  The  Body- 
Snatcher  (1884)  ;   The  Story  of  a  Lie  (1879). 

215 


R.    L.    STEVENSON 

Essays  of  Travel,  1905. 

The  Amateur  Emigrant  (1879)  ;  Cockermouth  and  Keswick 
(1871)  ;  An  Autumn  Effect  (1875)  ;  A  Winter's  Walk  (1876)  ; 
Forest  Notes  (1875-6)  ;  A  Mountain  Town  in  France  (1879)  ; 
Rosa  quo  Locorum  (1890)  ;  The  Ideal  House  ;  Davos  in 
Winter  (1881)  ;  Health  and  Mountains  (1881)  ;  Alpine  Diver- 
sions (1881);  The  Stimulation  of  the  Alps  (1881);  Roads 
(1873)  ;    On  the  Enjoyment  of  Unpleasant  Places  (1874). 

Poems,  1906. 

Underwoods  ;    Ballads  ;    Songs  of  Travel. 

Lay  Morals  and  Other  Papers,  1911. 

Lay  Morals  (1879)  ;  Father  Damien  (1890)  ;  The  Pentland 
Rising  (1866);  The  Day  after  To-morrow  (1887);  [College 
Papers]  Edinburgh  Students  in  1824  (1871);  The  Modern 
Student  considered  generally  (1871)  ;  Debating  Societies  (1S71) 
The  Philosophy  of  Umbrellas  (1871);  The  Philosophy  of 
Nomenclature  (1871);  [Criticisms]  Lord  Lytton's  ''Fables  in 
Song  "  (1874)  ;  Salvini's  Macbeth  (1876)  ;  Bagster's  "  Pilgrim's 
Progress"  (1882);  [Sketches]  The  Satirist  (T  1870) ;  Nuits 
Blanches  (?  1870)  ;  The  Wreath  of  Immortelles  (?  1870)  ; 
Nurses  (1870)  ;  A  Character  (?  1870)  ;  The  Great  North  Road 
(1895)  ;    The  Young  Chevalier  (1892)  ;    Heathercat  (1894). 

Records  of  a  Family  of  Engineers,  1912. 
Poems,  1913. 

Underwoods  ;   Ballads  ;   Songs  of  Travel  ;   A  Child's  Garden. 

The  Edinburgh  Edition  of  the  Works.  27  vols.  1894-97. 
The  Pentland  Edition  „  20  vols.  1906-07. 

The  Sxanston  Edition  ,,  25  vols.  1911-12. 


WILLIAM    BRENDON    AND    SOX,     LID. 
PRINTERS,     PLYMOUTH 


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